Naruto: Omophagia
by The God's Eye
Summary: "What would be the cost for your sins committed?" Said the sprite to the maiden. "Omophagia." She said quietly, "That their blood might be mine." The sprite was silent and then it fleered, "Who knew your heart was as black as mine, fair maiden." "Kneel, so you may be a maiden no longer."
1. Zero: Storytime

**Chapter :Zero: Storytime**

— **N: O —**

 _Uzumaki-dono, tell us a story! tell us a story!_

 _A story? Haven't you enough tomes in the Halls of Lives to find your own stories?_

 _..._

 _Ugh... do not look at me like that... I said... Fine! But one story and then you must go bother someone else._

 _YAY! Story time! Story time!_

 _Be quiet little ones and let me think of where to start... Oh I know. Well, this story, like many, begins with a woman by the name of... Kushina._

 _Kushina? Isn't that- Shhhh!_

* * *

An eagle soared high in the air above looking for prey. The pale moon illuminated the forest below it. It caught sight of two tall figures moving through the great forest; one leading the bumbling other with precise steps.

"Uzumaki Denka, a-are you sure doing this now is well advised?" The man in black looked out of place in the greenery they were passing through. His sinewy trouser clad legs struggled for purchase with each step.

The women, however, seemed an unstoppable force, her red hair was a near perfect complement to the greenery and her deft steps were akin to a predator's. Even her slight nod in response to the man's words couldn't be described as anything but graceful,

The only flaw the eagle noticed was the large bulge that seemed to replace what should have been a flat abdomen. Her dress covered it well but it wasn't beyond noticing.

The Eagle soon grew bored of following them in circles and flew away in search of smaller targets

"But Denka-" The man ducked under a hanging vine and brushed himself off yet again.

"I'm quite sure I made myself clear enough. I've made up my mind so stop worrying." Then redhead abruptly stopped forcing her companion to come to a sharp clumsy halt. She turned to face a grand tree with shimmering markings all over it.

"Ku-"

"Be quiet Seras. You'll wake things that should not be woken. Make as little noise as you can." She walked forward a bit and placed her hands on the tree trunk. It glowed and she disappeared beyond an unseen veil.

To her companion, it seemed as if she had simply sunk into the tree but he knew better than to stall. When he entered, he realized up had become down and that the formerly black sky had become a dull purple writhing mass of 'things' that he could not bear to stare at.

The starch white grass crackled underneath his feet but he walked diligently towards the woman. After quite a distance, and a walk on a sea of bones, they both arrived at the entrance to a decrepit Shinto shrine built into the trunk of a tree.

The redhead began to strip. The man schooled his eyes on the shrine then found it maddening and so looked at his companion who was kneeling back with her hands on her protruding belly. Finding nothing pure, he shut his eyes tightly. Everything in this world was wrong but the sight of unnatural tubes writhing in her body was one he could not stomach.

" _For what reason do you step within_ – oh, Little Kushina, you've returned." A disembodied voice greeted from inside the darkness of the shrine's halls with a peculiar upbeat tone. "That is the man who would be your sacrifice for the _Floccinaucinihilipilifictation_ ritual?" There was a nod in return and the voice continued, "Allow the man to step forward, what cost would you derive from your sin?"

"Omophagia; that their blood would become his." The voice stilled as the whispered answer reached it. For a full minute, it said nothing and then everything seemed to fleer at them.

"Let him step into me then and I shall receive your sacrifice."

The man had been stilled by the conversation until he realized his time had come. He could not say anything to give his mistress comfort and could not touch her either for fear of tainting her. His only attempt was made by stopping next to her on his way into the darkness.

Before the darkness consumed him and the taste of rotting blood filled his mouth, he finally opened his eyes

 _And saw hell._

— **N: O —**

 _You see, this brave woman had to sacrifice her oldest friend in order to protect what we believe in. But there was a deep resolve in her steps when she stepped out that had been faint before._

 _Where was the woman going back to?_

 _Where? Why the Leaf City where she was raised – Konohagakure._

 _But why didn't she just run away with – shh! You're stopping Uzuamaki-sama's story._

 _Perhaps I should stop here for today?_

 _No~! Please continue. We won't make any more noise._

 _Okay then, most of you should be aware of the Leaf City and what it looks like today. Well, back in those days it was a very different place._

* * *

Kushina struggled out of the forest into the clearing that housed the Great Entry Gate to Konohagakure.

Her floral patterned dress had tears in many different places and was drenched in the pouring rainwater. The young woman clutched her shoulders, pulling what was left of her outfit into a closer embrace.

What tears fell from her eyes could not be discerned from the streaks of water that slid off her hair unto her face. The shivers that wracked her body appeared to be from the cold but they simply covered the rumbling in her soul from losing someone so close.

What thoughts she had were overtaken with two desires. One conveyed by the hateful glint in her eye as she gazed at the gates and the other made clear by the hand on her belly.

Soon, in her confused pace, she tripped upon a bump in the stone road and fell to her knees. Her piercing scream was almost masked by the crack of thunder that followed the white forks of lightning that illuminated the night sky.

It also alerted a blonde and younger brunette to Kushina's presence. They rushed to the distraught woman's side with an umbrella. The blonde knelt and hugged the pregnant redhead with one hand causing her to break down further.

"Can you walk Kushina?"

The redhead gave no answer, instead leaning into the hug and burying her face prompting the older woman to hug her tighter. "It hurts Tsunade-sama... It hurts so much."

The woman, Tsunade, shushed her and simply picked her up in a bridal carry, the umbrella given new purchase in the hands of the brunette who watched her teacher and fellow student with a somber look.

* * *

 _That's Shizune! Keiko's –_

 _Yes, yes... Anyways, we move from that night to an even more tragic one, a month later, where the screams that would go on to fill the night started with those of a newborn baby._

— **N: O —**

"Kushina-dono, Arizawa-sensei asked me to inform you that the child was a boy." The redheaded mother breathed a sigh of relief through dry lips. If the young nurse noticed this, any thoughts about it went unsaid till she was safely across the room from the pale woman where she muttered about how she'd much rather prefer a female.

There was a knock not long after and the nurse rose and strode to the door in one fluid motion. "You have a visitor Denka, one Uchiha Mikoto."

Kushina sighed again before nodding. The door slid open and a brunette with bangs and a scar peeking out of the collar of her blouse rushed in, stole the nurse's chair and placed it beside the bed before fussing over the newly minted mother's frail figure.

"Oh Kushina... what did they do to you?" Mikoto held one of Kushina's skinny arms to her forehead. There was a brief moment of silence before they both turned to the nurse standing awkwardly across from them, "Could you perhaps give us a moment sweetheart?"

There was no steel in Mikoto's voice but the order was clear to the nurse who had no illusions that the woman in front of her was anything but her superior. Within seconds, there were only two women left in the room.

"They... they wouldn't even let me hold him Mikoto..." Kushina rasped out to her best friend who closed her eyes in disgust.

"I-I am sure this will only last a night. Hiruzen-"

Kushina slammed a hand uselessly against the blankets, "Hiruzen is not going to help. Everything and everyone has been corrupted in this bloody village." Her head bowed, Kushina made the decision to tell her best friend of her plans for the evening.

"That's... Are you sure you want to do this Kushina? This... this would be a catastrophic failure if you lose control over the-"

"I won't. I can't. The life of my son and everyone in this clan depends on my success tonight."

"Look at yourself Kushina! You're barely able to move a finger let alone take on the entire village."

"I just want to save them Mikoto... what would you have me do? What can I do?"

"Not aid in the destruction of our home for starters maybe?!" Mikoto pleaded back, "Don't do this Kushina. There are other ways. Can't you see? This is what the crags on the Council want you to do."

"They... are going to _take_ my baby... and turn him into a mindless weapon. I don't care what they want at this point." Her eyes were as dry as her throat. "Would you take your advice if it was Sasuke."

Kushina went silent.

And so did Mikoto.

"Get somewhere safe Mikoto... your family too, somewhere safe. Maybe... maybe tell that annoying husband of yours to stand at the city gates." Mikoto chuckled despite herself and tap her friend's forehead knowing there was some seriousness in her tone given how they caught each other staring at the scar.

"I'll take care of him if this falls apart. I swear it." Kushina sighed a bit relieved, but she couldn't stop her mission so late in the times.

Konohagakure would burn either way.

— **N: O —**

 _The local myths play the night off as the fault of the Great Demon Fox and his army of shrill foxes.  
The more educated civilians blamed the destruction on an invading enemy army.  
Aspersions were cast by those of noble blood and the die was set rolling on which of the Outer Clans had failed at their job.  
But the War Council had seen no demon fox nor was it an invading army, all they saw the aspect of chaos that is entropy and the madness that followed it into their great city._

* * *

Inuyashiki Sarada was a man of forty years, a ripe age for any who lived their lives as a commoner in the outer district of Konohagakure's Third Shōgen. With its crowded flats and population of rats, it was far from a quaint home but it was kept orderly by the Hyūga Clan. They acted as the Outer Clan for this particular Shōgen.

On his way home, Sarada couldn't help but slouch. The day had been long and dreary just like any of the others he spent at the factory. A chill swept through his body as two Hyūga guards stepped out of on alleyway fiddling with their robes. He pushed his head down further and ducked into the shadows hoping they did not notice him in their post-coital bliss.

Fortunately for him, they passed by him with no more than a slight glance. In that moment, he saw the scarring of the captivity seals on their foreheads and grimaced. He eyed Red City – the name of the district he'd just left – behind him longingly deciding to stay in the shadows a while longer and admire the grand casino lights.

That was until the laughing began.

It was at first just an incessant giggling from the alleyway beside him. Then it seemed to spread from one decrepit alleyway to the next till it was pouring out from every street corner around him

Sarada started to run for his apartment before feeling the chill from earlier. His mind calmed enough to turn his legs around. Towards Red City.

Red City was big. Big meant people. People meant safety.

But as he run, as his legs started to burn with every step, he realized the City was getting no closer. He simply closed his eyes and kept in the motion till he started actively falling backwards.

Backwards was where the laughter came from. The laughter was evil. He wasn't sure how he knew but he knew he had to

 _run_.

 _Run_.

 _RUN._

And so he did.

But when his feet started to weaken and his lungs turned to acid, he couldn't hold back his screams or his bladder.

It was quite the sight for what lied beyond the curtain of darkness slowly approaching as the childlike giggles turned deep and cracked then angry and sad when he slowed and stumbled.

The last sight Sarada beheld that night was that of the lovers from before, seemingly kissing in the moonlight. A red moon stared back and made their eyes look blood red.

 _Why are their eyes open? They're supposed to be kissing... so why is he chewing? Why are their faces red? Why? Why?_

 _Why?_

 _Omophagia._

No one heard from Inuyashiki Sarada ever again.

And none who knew him were spared to remember him.

Because that day... that night...

* * *

 _Konohagakure went mad._

 _..._

 _Or at least, a fourth of it did._

 _What happened to the rest of the Leaf City?_

 _Well..._

The city alarms went off as the first wave of spears decimated Red City's biggest businesses. They woke the slumbering city up but the splash of water that followed were truly the screams of the unfortunate souls who found themselves in close proximity with any of these spears.

Sarutobi Ai was one of the citizens that witnessed the cause of these screams in action. Being a retired Shinobi, she was able to step out of harm's way. However, being the only shinobi present, she was hopelessly out of her depth.

Ai had come to this Shengxuan Casino expecting no more trouble than a few drunken men. As such she had left her husband's primary emergency kunai at home with her other killing implements.

Not that it seemed they would help her here. What was killing these civilians seemed to be the acidic cloud of purple pouring out of the spear stuck into the green topped billiards table. The cloud seemed to warp and pulsate sickly with every body it swept over. As a shinobi with sensory talents, she couldn't help but be captivated by the cloud's hideousness.

So fascinated was she by the death cloud that she started to move towards trying to find a better vantage point. It kept moving hypnotically as if drawn to her and soon it had ensnared her to its tune.

Just before she could embrace the death cloud, a gust of wind blew into the room, sending her careening over to the side. The cloud seemed to emit a pained shriek as glowing rods landed in it.

So painful was the shriek to both Ai and her unborn child that it rendered one deaf and the little one non-viable. As a curse of extending her senses, Ai felt the f die within her and let out a wail to join the chorus that would come to be known as the...

* * *

 _Chi Zetsubou no Ka – The Song of a Thousand Despairing!_

 _You've certainly done your reading Keiko, unlike the rest of these ruffians. I'd expected all of you to have joined that chorus._

 _..._

 _Hm, must be a tough crowd. Anyways..._

The screams would eventually peter out through the course of the night but not before each shinobi running rescue details and damage control were made utterly tone deaf to the melodies of the night. Such was the nature of the song as it melded with the shrieks of dying clouds – clouds which began to retreat to the outer wall, taking the essence of their victims with them, and coalesce into a foul smelling ball on top of the wall itself.

Before any of the commanders or team leaders could react however, the ball burst upwards releasing a spray of blood all over the outer district. Every man, woman and animal caught by the blood lost all knowledge of themselves and turned feral.

From the very top ranks, an order was given to strike down any and all persons exhibiting signs of this madness, so man turned on his fellow citizen for the survival of the village (and more importantly themselves).

On the other end of the spectrum, children turned on their pets as feral pets fed on their children. Mothers killed their babies and fathers slew their daughters. Brother fought sister and nothing was left unharmed.

All to the tune of one ever weakening woman on her deathbed.

"Tsunade-sensei, y-you can't allow this to continue. Have you seen the... the _slaughter_ that is going on? The sheer scale of it... She has come too far, you have to stop her." The brunette could still feel the bile from her earlier retching as she spoke but it seemed no relief would come from her teacher. "You-"

"Shut up Shizune. Shut up and be quiet. Do you really think I would let Kushina, _my only family_ , give her life for something even- _even remotely related_ to this sick place? Tell me – do you?" Senju Tsunade had so far been patient with her student but no one would ever give her prizes for her patience.

And even though she realized the sentiment her student was trying to appeal to, she had no love left for the village. None left for the corrupt council and none left for the insane masterminds who called themselves kind leaders.

She knew Kushina would hate her eternally for foiling her plans but there was no way she could live with herself if she let the woman die. Tsunade hesitated with the syringe in between her fingers.

 _Ever the coward Tsunade. Do it... Do it!_

Tsunade pushed the needle in and depressed the plunger releasing a viscous blue liquid into Kushina's bloodstream. Her head dropped down as the tenketsu in Kushina's body started to glow a vibrant purple and then return to their natural corroded blue.

Not long after, violent convulsions wracked the sleeping woman, twisting her limbs and arching her back to awkward angles. Tsunade and her pupil watched horrified with the realization that the blonde medic had made an error in judgment.

They had interfered in something beyond them, beyond normalcy, beyond sanity, and Kushina was paying the price.

As Tsunade worked hard to save her cousin's life, the shower of blood came to a slow stop and the fires were finally put out.

— **N: O —**

 _The City, it seemed, would live to see the dawn._

 _But Uzumaki-dono, what about Kushina? or her son? or the village and-_

 _All stories for another time. Now you all must be off. I do not want any complaints from your parents._

 _But-_

 _No. Now off you go._

 _Thank you Uzumaki-dono. Come on guys, Ichinose BBQ is still open._

 _..._

 _..._

 _Why are you still here Keiko-chan?_

 _I want to hear the rest of the story..._

 _Hm... I take it you've figured out the riddle as to why my records are not in the Hall of Life?_

 _Yes sir._

 _Well, come in then. Let me tell you about a boy named Naruto Uzumaki._

— **N: O —**

Shōgen - Quadrant.

 **Welcome to all readers, both new and old.** **I hope you liked this chapter. To all those returning, the next four chapters have been deleted and will be reposted with more content and fine tuning.**

 **Watch out for that,  
till next time,  
TGE.**


	2. One: A Boy

**Chapter :One: A Boy**

— **N: O —**

 _There once lived a boy.  
A boy lived in a cell.  
A cell in the dark room.  
The dark room in the depths.  
The depths beneath the great tree._

 _Was that boy Naruto?_

 _...Perhaps_

* * *

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, six hundred and seventy...'_

The sounds of footsteps echoed through the darkness reaching their ears of the only other occupant of the room.

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight...'_

The footsteps drew closer.

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, six hundred and eighty two.._.'

Before each footstep, came the sound of a single key hitting against its key ring.

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, six hundred and ninety...'_

From the sounds it made, this was a particular dense key which had indentations in its-

"Prisoner Number Zero-Zero-Six-A," A deep voice cut through the swathe of darkness,

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, seven hundred and one...'_

"Your skills have been commissioned by the Lord General Shimura..." it droned on and on about something or another.

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, seven hundred and fifteen...'_

"If your adrenaline spikes, your restraints will be tightened to cut off your air supply..." As the chain door swung open, the prisoner refocused on the key,

'... _five million, two hundred and fifty-two thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three...'_

"The sensory dampeners will be put back on if you stay silent for too long..." the indentations running through the key's shaft slid into place into a keyhole near him.

A click.

The prisoner shook free as the final root slid off. Two pops were heard – one from the prisoner and the other from his jailer, killing one and freeing the other's stiff neck.

' _Kill... by catastrophic cervical fracture... time since last kill... sixty days and nineteen hours...'_

The prisoner started to walk away from the quickly cooling corpse.

' _...one...two...three...four...five...six..._ '

— **N: O —**

The day was a day like any other in Ta no Kuni – wet and warm like the paddy fields the lands derived its namesake from. The rains made the golden town of Kin no Machi look grey and unwelcome under the golden canopy of roofs. The pitter-patter of rainfall on the rooftops had gradually increased to a deafening roar.

Bolts of lightning threw their weight around in the sky; the accompanying thunder roared their rivalries in tune. The storm had been sudden and had trapped many citizens in temporary shelters. It had also watered down the sound of an explosion.

A mother and her child walked through the streets of the town underneath a bronze umbrella. They had opted to leave the safety of the grocery store in an attempt to run home. Halfway across the street, an automated carriage tore through a street corner heading straight towards them.

Before it hit them however, their bodies were pulled out of the way by an unseen entity grabbing them by their collars and dropped them out of harm's way. The mother and child stared shocked at the carriage speeding away. Above them, three blurred figures chased the rapidly speeding carriage.

Their conversation was transmitted over the tiny devices lodged in their ears.

"Do you want to be buried here, do you?! We have one last job Metero, one last kill!" A pale man yelled as powerful wiry legs carried him between golden tiled roofs.

His voice carried through the shared communicator device each member of his team wore, annoying both of them.

"Would you be quiet Setsuna?!" One of the look-alikes running behind him whispered back harshly as they chased a carriage through the rain, "Your mouth is what got us into this mess, the least you can do-"

"My...? That psycho killed everyone in the hotel. We were going to be next." The thin man, Setsuna, shot back.

"He wouldn't have known we were there if you hadn't broken rank!" The trio slowed down as they approached the town's bridge. "Shit! He can't cross that bridge or we lose the contract."

The more collected of the twins went through a series of hand seals as they ground to a halt on their last roof. When the chain ended, a pressurized ball of super-heated air shot out of the mercenary's mouth.

It struck the bridge ahead of the carriage instead, having been set off course by the turbulent winds. Its impact caused a huge explosion, causing the driver to tilt the carriage in an effort to avoid the new hole in the bridge. The vain effort was rewarded with the death of the driver as the carriage flipped over and sent him headfirst into the ground at a fatal angle.

The lucky passenger crawled out of the wreck clutching at his flabby arm. It was coated in blood and seemed to be unresponsive to the world, hanging limply behind him as he struggled away.

The trio of assassins stared pitilessly at the "blue-blooded" man crawling away.

"They're really all the same once you take away the clothes and the gold and add a dash of blood." A foreign voice rang in their heads. There was a split second before the realization hit but it was enough for poor Setsuna to lose his head.

The twins paid no heed to the headless corpse beside them, instead opting to speed away from the rooftop thus narrowly avoiding losing their lives in a similar fashion. However, it was only once they were on the bridge that they realized the corner they had backed into.

By now the rain had let down but the townspeople knew better than to be spectators for the bloodbath that was about to follow. Every window facing the bridge on every building nearby was either shut, locked or barred down. Even the people under open shelters clamored into the nearest hidden space.

Back on the bridge, the slow retreat of the twins had joined paces with the predatory advance of their would-be killer. Each step back was mirrored by a step forward till it became a sure rhythm. Even the crawling noble had managed to keep his adrenaline fueled escape attempt going.

The situation seemed so hopeless that both twins made the decision to sacrifice themselves so the other could live. Then either noticed the glint in the other's eye and realized neither would concede the right to live. It developed into a simple three way impasse before...

"Gurk!" The dead-eyed assassin spat out a glob of blood as knife dug itself into his back. Both Metoro and Etoro, having been broken out of their shared reverie by the sudden attack on their hunter, looked shocked as the hunter was stabbed again and again by a civilian holding a tantō.

Once their hunter had stopped shivering and finally died, Metero took a second glance at their civilian rescuer and noticed...

 _Absolutely nothing_.

— **N: O —**

That evening, at the brothers' temporary base in the town's Banjo Inn, they found themselves bent over a game of Go while awaiting someone. Unbeknownst to either of them, said person had entered twice under the guise of housekeeping.

The third time was much more obvious as there was a gust of wind from the window heralding his arrival. The brothers leaped to their feet, sacrificing their competitive game and ruffling their sleep mats.

"Who the fuck–" Etoro found his brother's hand stopping his question and opted to follow his lead instead of retaliating in kind.

"Konoha-san?" The unassuming man nodded a reply to Metero before holding out an envelope, "Don't... don't you want a debriefing?" There was a long stare and the envelope went down with a shrug. Etoro glared at his brother for costing them a quick leave. Metero just looked confused.

"Well... the Konjiki brothers are officially reporting the successful assassinations of the–"

' _How long will this take I wonder...'_

"–our signature was left at the site of the hotel but the explosion was delayed, allowing the last target, Sōsuke Fukuda-"

' _I wonder if the black will take its advantage once they resume their game...'_

"–there is also the issue of compensation for the added danger of all this due to the fact that a mercenary hunter from–"

' _Shake my head? Why...? ...Okay, done. Now will he stop talking?'_

"–shut up Etoro... it's how business is done... Konoha-san?"

' _Oh now he wants the envelope...'_

The man again lifted the envelope to shoulder height before fiddling with a particular bone white key.

Metoro grabbed the envelope and began to count in the peaceful silence that filled the room after his debrief. He was soon reminded that his brother and silence didn't agree when the scarred man asked their handler,

"So... how about Setsuna's cut?" Etoro groaned internally but listened close for the answer.

"Setsuna? Who's that?" The man's voice was more than a whisper but it floated away on the wind just as soon as it was heard.

"Ah, you're keeping it for–"

"It's all here Konoha-san, five million ryō and the added two thousand. WE will be taking our leave now." Etoro glared at the nondescript man whose eyes followed him blankly till he was pulled out the doorway by his brother.

When they were gone, the man faded away.

An ornate cup of black tea sat smugly in the bony fingers of a man known as Shimura Danzō. It shimmered its way to a cool temperature as its drinker sipped it at regular intervals. If the cup of tea was sentient, it would've noticed the pressure placed on its fragile body by seemingly frail hands. It would've known this was a sign of the cadaver's growing impatience.

If the cup had been any more aware, it would've heard the slight creaking of the large door opposite the throne in the room and seen the man that walked in. It would however, have looked over him in an attempt to notice something less dreary. For the man was dressed in a garb so mundane it made Danzōs shirt and robe look fashionable.

If it had ears it would've heard their conversation which consisted of a harsh scolding from Danzō,

"This is the third time you've threatened our interest with your ineffectiveness boy. And what are you wearing in my presence?"

The man became a boy, shedding his clothes, height and hair color before them. The cup had no sense of color but if it did it would have noticed the stark white skin and blood red hair that seemed to be tipped in black pain. It would have noticed the network of thin gray scars travelling across his torso or the large green and gray pupils in his eyes.

With any more sentience, it would have registered the tense nonchalance on the boy's expression as scars on his back were ripped with such precision that they revealed the nerves underneath. Then it would have registered the cracking of that facade to reveal a broken child in pain.

But the cup of tea was simply that and so heard nothing of this and saw nothing.

Not even Danzō sealing the boy in a large sarcophagus and calling two agents to carry him along.

It instead sat in the cold dark till its contents had long since gone cold. Nobody would find it for a very long time and it went untouched at peace.

Seeing nothing.

Hearing nothing.

 _Doing nothing._

* * *

 _Uzumaki-dono, that was a very weird tale with the tea cup._

 _Was it? I thought it was quite clever..._

 _What happened to Naruto after?_

 _Oh yes..._

— **N: O —**

"Hokage-sama, listen to me! This is not the right step to take. Allow Shimura-san to finish his work." A frail woman chased after a much more vibrant blond. She struggled to keep her steps in pace with his long strides and was reduced to hobbling along after him.

"Hokage-sama, I must agree with my colleague here! It is Shimura-san's organization that has allowed us to tap into the potential of the outer clan's filth." An equally frail man lumbered behind alongside the woman, only able to keep better pace due to his long legs. "If he advices this path, we should trust he knows what he is–"

"Koharu-san, Homura-san, tell me, do you know how many Bijū Iwagakure has?" The blond in front of them slowed imperceptibly to speak over his shoulder.

"T-two... According to updated intelligence, they have two, Hokage-sama." Koharu answered while Homura interjected,

"Hokage–"

"And... what of our _friends_ to the north, Kumogakure?" The man questioned yet again in velvet tones.

"Two... sir..." They both answered realizing his agenda.

"Do you think their Bijū are being buried below prisons in an effort to train their Jinchurki?" Silence answered the mostly rhetorical question as both elders simmered in the wake of their scolding. "I thought not."

The blond man waved his elders off his trail and walked towards the core of the detention center he was in.

Given that most of the detention center was built around the widened crater of a live volcano, a large pool of lava sat in its center. Three extendable walkways hung above it connecting to a circle bridge built into the inner walls of the volcano. Each door that was not an exit was the door to a prison cell built into the mountain. As such the walls of the crater were lined with row of cell doors facing the lava.

Hanging over the controlled bowl of lava was a sarcophagus filled with one redhead and a lot of spikes to prevent struggling. At least in theory, the redhead inside had impaled his body on the spikes repeatedly in an attempt to escape the human shaped coffin. It leaked a stream of black blood that evaporated before they could hit the face of the lava below.

With the amount of shaking that happened, Danzō was starting to doubt the chakra draining feature of the sarcophagus was in effect. The more analytical side of the man's brain registered the increased desperation in the struggle while the more basic part realized the malevolence leaking from the coffin. But Danzō had not come this far in his career by ignoring his instincts.

He knew what the Hokage wanted from him and he had been unable to convince the youngling otherwise. Diplomatic though the man might be, he was also much smarter and distrustful of his elder advisors than his predecessor, Hiruzen. His rational side had told him the Hokage had a serious valid point, but his lizard brain knew the jinchuriki could not be controlled.

That mother of his had done something to make him more than they could handle. He remembered the bitterness at the Uzumaki whore's ingenuity but he wouldn't be bested. He was a Shimura and he would bury the boy no matter what happened.

His plan was solid, as always, it even took into play the Hokage's timed entrance and his advisor's failure to stop. All he had to do was wait for the sarcophagus to be called back and then he could give the signal for his disguised agent to push it over.

It could be misconstrued as a bitter pawn of the Kuge or a mistaken gesture by a stupid guard. And the best part was, that wasn't the only plan. Contingencies included the chakra explosive under the walkway, a long-range attack disguised as an assassination attempt and even the boy's own struggle tearing the ropes which held him up.

As fate would have it, the turbulence below it was way more than the ropes could handle and yet it an ironic twist, it gave up its load just as the Hokage walked into the room. Thus, when he stepped on the bridge, the first thing the Hokage saw, in standard dramatic slowed motion, was the snapping of all five ropes holding the coffin.

That was followed by a dismayed yell from Danzō as the sarcophagus fell towards the lava. In an instant, he was upon Danzō with a hand reared to strike the old man for his treasonous act. He barely managed to quell the instinctual anger as the sarcophagus hit the lava and started to sink.

" _What_ have you done Danzō?" The man received no reply as Danzō looked back at him stunned, mentally lamenting the most latest Uzumaki-style subversion of his plans.

At least this time it didn't completely grow to fruition and he could still-

Danzō felt a familiar warping of space around the outline of his body and saw his surroundings shift from the rapidly disappearing volcanic crater to the grey of the sky above. When the old man opened his eyes, the pool of lava was directly below him but it was vastly shrunken. The detention center previously hidden within the volcano was exposed to the skies from which they fell and most of it seemed to have been eaten away leaving a round ring of the remnants.

He looked at the Hokage's shocked face and back to the new perfectly hemispherical crater beneath them. When he spotted the slightly melted sarcophagus below them, his mind clouded with rage and he bit his tongue in an attempt to stop a scream and over the whipping winds, he heard the Hokage faintly ask something but knew nothing except unconscious rage.

If the sarcophagus was mostly untouched that meant...

 _The Uzumaki was still alive._

* * *

 _But... how did he survive? did he survive? He fell into a volcano Uzumaki-sama..._

 _Well..._

— **N: O —**

Kuge - Noble (Class)

Ta no Kuni - Land of Rice Fields

Kin no Machi - Golden Town [loosely]

 **That's a wrap folks.  
Questions? Critique? Comments? Tell it all in the reviews or in a PM.  
To returning readers, as I said, I'm adding content and fine tuning so you'll have to bear with me for the next week.**

 **Till next time,  
** **TGE.**


	3. Two: His Dream

**Chapter :Two: His Dream**

— **N: O —**

 _Ah Keiko-chan? You're back...? Come sit... sit._

 _Uzumaki-dono, I'm sorry I wasted so much time; mother had me catch up on my ascesis even though I said I was with you!_

 _Aha, don't worry about it. Where did I get last time... ah I remember; I was going to give you a look into what happened in his-_

 _Tummy!_

 _-abdomen... yes. However I do need to make certain things clear. First pay heed to this;  
Who knows where he belongs?  
Which of the dead remembers their past?  
When do we realize that madness lies within?  
Where do we go when we are unconscious of that outside us?_

* * *

The five senses.

 _Vision, Hearing, Smell, Feeling, Taste._

All considered _fundamentals_ to life. All actually fundamentals to _sanity_. What happens when one loses all of these senses? One so deprived of their senses would not die but surely wish they were. After all, an entity unable to interact with their surroundings is of no need to those outside.

 _He_ was one of these entities, senseless and unaware of everything.

 _Except;_

He was alive, he did not know why he was sure but that assuredness was the only constant in his existence. Perhaps it was because despite having no physical senses to speak of, he had...

 _Belief_

He had heard it said that 'every entity required belief to stay aware'. As such, he must have believed in himself so much that he felt sure he existed.

 _Although that was not enough._

 _Thought_

An entity such as him would need to think to make belief possible. And so in his thoughts he held the _everlasting_ conversation. Why and where did he exist? Where did he come from? Why couldn't he move? He could swear he had answers but he was never quite sure what he answered after it ended hence the unending _cycle_.

 _Imagination_

And although there was nothing he could answer correctly, he could make himself believe these answers. The whiteness of the spacey – _spacious -_ void in which he floated, for instance, was one of said imagined answers. Of course, there could not be an answer to everything. There was not an answer to anything really. Imagination was a _fickle_ thing.

 _Reasoning_

He supposed he could simply open his eyes and look around him. It was not a difficult task and there was nothing stopping him. He was sure he remembered where his eyes were but the last time he had done that... well he could not remember what happened. Perhaps he should try it again.

And so he did.

 _Memories_

Flashes, he called them; intense but short _._ Just as fickle, if not more, than his porous imagination. Opening his eyes brought forth a landscape of... _cherry blossoms_ – ah yes, those. He'd only managed to see them clearly for a few seconds before the _pain_ hit. He would have screamed if he remembered how but he settled for tightly shutting his eyes.

But for some reason, they would not close.

There was a long suffering pause before he realized the pain was fading and he looked down to see the sharp thing – blade – lodged firmly in his... abdomen.

 _Emotion – Pain_

Even though his _neck_ did not respond to his commands to turn, he was vaguely aware of the screams behind him and even though he recognized the pain in them, he focused on moving forward. Even when the pain got unbearable, he found himself drawing ever nearer to the burning cherry blossom tree ahead.

It was in these moments that he came to realize the one thing so concentrated and evident of his mortality was pain.

He would, or maybe had already, come to accept this state as eternal, unending and – and

 _Utterly maddening_.

And there was nothing he could do about it if he did not accept things the way-

 _What... is that?_

What is what?

 _That! The_ _ **hole**_ _in the sky!_

A single eye popped up and pain rushed in through a forgotten channel. This pain was real however, not phantom and emotional. It was him that was in pain this time. He grew excited underneath the wave of feeling

 _Wait! Do not open-_

Another eye opened.

Pain.

PAIN.

 _How does one clearly convey pain again? A scream should do. One should make sure the scream is long and stretched out. However, in the likely case that this does not solve anything, one should be prepared to scream louder._

And so he screamed. He could not tell why he could feel his screams vibrate around him till his unused optic nerves registered the viscous grey he was sinking through. He turned and twisted as pain worse than a phantom blade spread across his body.

Through the twisted filter of grey, he recognized the cracks spreading the across the sky just before his floating body was wracked with another episode of scream-inducing torture. The gibberish he babbled afterwards went unheard as his ears rang with different names and sounds.

 _Ichiraku  
Test Subject Zero Zero Twenty  
Sarutobi_

As he turned around, he saw his doom. A gaping spiraling maw of darkness below him...

And he was slowly sinking. He could not feel his body underneath all the pain. The agitated shaking was simply an aftereffect of the nerve wracking pain that had affected him.

Down, down, down.  
More names.

 _Filed Genkai  
Shino  
Naruto_

Drowning  
Sinking.  
Falling.

Naruto

Naruto

 _Naruto_

One name repeated until,

— **N: O —**

"H-his name... is... Naruto," The baby could barely see the figure that snatched him away from the warmth of the red curtain behind him. No, not a curtain; a woman, a young one – his mother. The loss of her embrace and her whispered words made him snarl till he was calmed by the older brunette who held him.

The wrinkles on her face fascinated him so he pawed at them when she raised him to her face. Unfortunately, his unnaturally claw-like nails left trails of blood across her eye. The woman's grandmotherly look warped into a stern frown.

"P-please Biwako. Do... don't let them-." The baby could only feel himself sleep after a prick in his buttocks.

— **N: O —**

The toddler woke up with a start as he heard a crackle across the room. He smelt the smog before he saw its ominous spread across the room's ceiling. Flames jumped towards his bed and the young boy found himself brushing the red hair out of his face to observe the fascinating dance.

His hand reached out to caress the beautiful flames once they were looming over his bed. It was only once he felt the ugly sting that he realized the danger he was in. He frantically looked for an exit as he tumbled out of his bed. Without thinking of the window, he jumped through the wall of flames and landed on a bed of burning logs.

With the pain in his legs and the slowly narrowing pathway, the boy was forced to a crouch as he crawled through the flames. By the time he fit through the door of the orphanage, he could feel his lungs were heavy with smoke and his limbs raw with burns. Just before he fainted again outside of the burnt down orphanage, he saw two pairs of white trouser clad legs approaching him.

"First... danger levels... absolute fail."

— **N: O —**

The boy knew no love within the four whitewashed walls of his cell. His hands were on his knees and supported his lowered head as he sat in the corner. It was a wonder he had been able to move here given the lack of sustenance he had endured for weeks.

He was not a stubborn child – far from it. He had come to crave the affection of the scientists who worked but learnt to ignore their tired promises. He craved the feeling of satisfaction that came from consumption even more. He had craved it so much that the attendants had to cover his arms with dense clothes to prevent him from chewing them off.

His lips had not been so lucky and his satisfied lipless grin has been the nightmare fuel for many of his caretakers on the day he ate them – his lips, not the scared attendants.

But that had been two days ago and his body was too spent to heal his lips or allow him the energy to rip off his binds. In the light of the cell's hanging light bulb, the boy appeared to be a hollow skeleton. If the scientists had need of another scan, they would only require him to undress and his bones would be on display.

The boy hated the hunger. He hated the stillness in his limbs. He hated his body for rejecting even the liquids that were pumped into it. He hated the cold. He hated hearing his heart beat and shake weakly.

 _All he wanted was to feel satisfied_.

That was the last thought he had in the land of the living.

— **N: O —**

Drowning. He was still drowning. Black had long replaced grey and darkness replaced the light. He only realized he was still in his past when the boy heard the sinister but nostalgic giggles in the wall.

Death, or at least the temporary approximation of it, was not a pleasant thing to experience when underage. Like getting lost in a wild forest or being trapped in a flooding closet, it leaves a scar on one's psyche. If one should ever escape, one would find that scar to be deep and damning.

When the boy died, he did not know of this occurrence. He could not hear the scientist's fretting over his body or see them move him to the Kinkyū Fukkatsu Unit.

All he saw was the wall.

 _And the faces in it._

The faces giggled.

 _And so did he._

While he was on the brink of cheerful madness, the darkness had slithered into his every pore filling him and more importantly

 _Satisfying_ him.

This feeling was so shocking his laughter stopped. But when the voice spoke, it spoke with an eerie cheerful growl.

"..." It said sounding like a fork on plates, then "..." it continued sounding like a purring cat.

 _I want more,_ He tried to say.

 _Get your own_ , They scolded back.

 _How do I?_ He questioned again.

They giggled once more and he knew how. He could not possibly imagine himself doing such a thing but, as established, visits to the plane beyond do not leave one intact. If one goes down, they may come back but they always bring something along with them.

He only remembered the agony of the exit trip as quite unfair.

— **N: O —**

' _A new face at the Academy_ ' that is what they described him as.

" _Too young for his class_ " that is what they reasoned as the cause for his lack of effort.

A trimester of learning had been missed but he honestly could not be bothered to catch up. The things he read were supposed to be basic and would not matter till early next year when they had their annual examination.

He could almost hear the senile old man telling him once again to pay attention to his books but all he cared about was going to his flat in Dead Read and getting food to eat. The thought of food made him groan as the last of the snack in his mouth slid down his throat and the hunger quelled itself temporarily.

The boy saw his partner for the reading assignment they had been given stare at him curiously. The boy licked his lips and grinned at the older child next to him who recoiled at the sight of bloodied skin between the boy's fanged teeth.

It was quite hilarious when the child was silenced by the teacher he went squealing to. Imagine that, a class of shinobi hopefuls scared by a bit of raw meat between a man's teeth. What would they do next?

* * *

An entire class of rejects is what they had placed them in. The child angrily shook his foot to throw off the stench of vomit. How does killing food make someone spew the contents of their stomach? At least he got a cage of rabbits to take home.

He just had to clean them off.

Arriving home that evening, the boy bit off the head of one rabbit he took from the cage.

 _Remember to chew properly_

Feeling the skull break against his teeth and its brains melt against his tongue had to be the best thing he knew. He leaned against his broken window frame and took another bite of the still-kicking rabbit. Then he stared at the rabbit till he noticed the soul leaving its body.

Growing tired of staring at the waking Dead Red, recently Red City, he jumped out of the window. His lithe body landed on one of the many tubes that connected the towering half-buildings in the city. Finding his balance was hard but he had done this-

His feet slipped as he stepped forward and he fell off the tube. With a splattering bang, he fell into the hard floor below him. The last thing he heard before death rejected his soul again was the scream of a young woman who had just taken the alleyway to cut down her travel time.

The child woke up in the arms of the flustered woman who seemed to be trying to feed him some kind of hot wet strings.

— **N: O —**

 _Uzumaki-dono, I do not understand something. Why did he forget all of this? And if this isn't forgotten, why is there a smaller version of him trapped inside him?_

 _In time you will have your answers Keiko. Now pay attention, I am nearly done._

* * *

There was a brief pause in the experience of flashbacks; a small break in the rush of emotions. Not enough for him to catch his breath but enough for him to notice the feeling of reaching the core of the darkness. He could see small orbs of light around him and reached out to grab a few.

He found they attached themselves tightly to his hand making it glow with their light. There was a prick and a tug at the back of his head and he was pulled into another series of flashbacks.

 _He was helping out the woman from the Ramen stand as she grew her business._

 _He was going to the Academy and made tense friendships with his naive classmates._

 _He watched as they signed a slip for an excursion and forged the old man's signature with ease._

 _He felt elation as he finally left the gates of his dear Leaf City leaving behind the lab, training fields and his only home._

 _He backed away from the massacre of the class 1-E, crawling over the corpses of his classmates._

 _He slaughtered every one of the fire wielding demons._

 _He hated fire with a cold dead passion._

 _He was taken into the pit that he would come to know as home for the next four years. Twisted and reformed and sealed into something._

 _Something entirely different._

 _Something that hungered for death and followed their orders at every step._

 _Over time, he managed to resist. With each kill, he regained some infinitesimally small part of himself. Until they could no longer control him._

 _But he kept going._

 _Fueled by a simple drive to kill the ones who tortured him._

— **N: O —**

He opened his eyes to see himself fall into a tunnel flooded with water. He wiped his face as he sat up out of the water, inadvertently rubbing the glowing orbs against his mouth. Before he knew it, they were sliding down his throat.

First, He briefly lived the life of an accomplished scholar who worked as a cryptologist, with a synesthesia that caused him to visualize numbers and symbols he thought of. He had diagnosed himself as suffering from a slight case of dementia. He remembered being in the inner levels of the detention center due to illegal use of chakra and passing his time by studying and calculating budgeting his savings against his sister's newfound addiction to Memai, the narcotic enhancer that hit the Dead Red last month.

 _Pain, need to stop the..._

Then he was her, a cook for the new section of the outer levels, a woman who had an Obsessive-compulsive disorder that drove her to cut and wash everything perfectly. Her husband had recently squandered their life savings on some stupid pharmaceutical investments – he was probably lying, he lied a lot back then before the divorce. She could have worked for the prestigious Ichiraku Restaurant but the health evaluation had brought up her disorder reducing her to a prison cook. She was the head of her section now; let no one say she was anything but determined.

 _I'm going to die if this keeps up._

Just as he'd finished that thought he was another woman, this one lived a personal life shrouded in secrecy – he... she was another killing machine but she had free will to an extent – Anbu operative then. Not many friends and planned never to marry nor have kids after her personal sensei had been reported dead in childbirth. Her resolve was tested by her boyfriend's desire to do just that before his health failed him completely and his disease killed him. Breaking up with him would be detrimental to both of them – the sex was relaxing during the good days and he could use the emotional support.

 _I need to-_

He was a spy from Kumogakure spying on their more obscure torture program. He had been caught and used as a test subject for the program. Although the Cloud's secrets lay untouched and would remain that way because the pressure was soon going to render him brain dead. The last thing he could remember was hearing that his home village had blacklisted him almost immediately after he was caught and the seal meant to kill him leaving him invalid.

 _-get out of-_

Then he was an artist, although many had called him a serial killer. It was such a rude title but alas that was the price he paid for trying to make unconventional art. They'd put a kunai in his hand and told him to fight for them, he'd done that and had discovered his art. They wouldn't allow him live canvases to work on everyday so he'd branched out and they hadn't been happy. They were even less happy when he tried to procure fresh canvases, one's not marked by other artists, and they had placed him here. Jealous was what they were, simply jealous of his works. They didn't even let him keep his tools.

 _-HERE!_

* * *

He did not remember moving but when he woke up from his blackout he was trudging through murky waters. A desire to keep walking kept him moving despite the rising waters he walked through.

The sloshing of his legs through the pipe became a routine sound accompanying his trek. As he walked, it became harder to move through the water as it became denser He found that the pipe grew wider as the water rose. When it got to his chin, he realized he had come to a giant door that sprouted smaller pipes disemboguing sludge.

Opening the door required little effort causing him to stumble into the darker larger room beyond from the wasted exertion. He walked up large steps to get to dry ground. When he took his last step off the stairs, he heard thumps behind him and looked back to see five bodies slumped on the steps.

Somewhere in his mind, he realized they had been following him. He kept walking despite this recognition. The urge to walk forward seemed to be the only thing in control of his actions. He did slow down when the large bars shrouded in darkness at the side of the room shivered and shook. The large yellow grin that pushed itself into the bars made him walk faster.

Finally the desire to walk left him in front of a crying woman. The woman, he observed, had the palest complexion underneath the purple shawl she wore. The abnormous white horns on her forehead contrasted heavily against her straight dark hair and stood out of place on her smaller head.

He made to touch her when she suddenly grabbed his encroaching hand, whipped him around and threw him back out of the room, through the pipes and into consciousness.

— **N: O —**

 _To be sure, it was a harrowing experience; years of sensory deprivation followed by a forced stream of memories. Coincidentally-_

 _Oh I see, so that's why he attacked the doctors when he woke up and had to be kept under tranquilizers._

 _You took the words right out of my mouth little one. Now for a break..._

 _We are going to call him Naruto now right?_

 _A break I said._

— **N: O —**

Genkai - Bloodline

Kinkyū Fukkatsu - Emergency Revival

ANBU (Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai) - Literally meaning: Special Assassination and Tactical Squad

 **This was quite the Frankenstein's monster of a chapter. I made it from three versions.  
** **Unfortunately, and fortunately, this is the last of such chapters as I lost the template for the third one. As such, returning readers might notice some discrepancies.**  
 **But that is neither here nor there. I would like to hear what you all thought, as always.  
Leave a review or send a PM.**

 **Till next time,  
TGE.**


	4. Three: His Recovery

**Chapter :Three: His Recovery**

— **N: O —**

 _Uzumaki-dono... are you asleep?_

 _Asleep? No... I have not done that in quite a while._

 _Is there something I can do? An inunction perhaps?_

 _The oil disturbs my psyche and I do not want my story resembling a capilotade. Although, unlike myself, Naruto had been doing a lot of resting._

* * *

Like an animal from its hibernacle, Naruto's shaved head popped from underneath the blanket of the hospital bed. A bogglish yawn escaped him after he double-checked his surroundings. Half a second into the yawn, his right hand reached up against his conscious will to cover his gaping mouth,

The boy stared betrayed as the bandaged hand brushed the short hair on top of his head. Suddenly he was reminded of the horrible night before.

 _A sea of red strands dirtied his bed sheet. The sound of a razor dragging across skin filled his ears. He stared ahead unflinchingly as strands of his hair fell. A phantom tear slid down scarred cheeks._

"Shall we continue our game Naruto-kun?" A tender voice broke him out of his vain recollections. Another hand, clenched around the _knight_ piece that had been thrown at him. He stared at the speaker; a balding man in an ornamented wheelchair – and shook his head in accismus. The old man gestured as he laid the board out on the bed, "I see you're still a bit distraught over your situation."

Naruto's reaction was less controlled than he liked but with his nerve impulses moving like snails through molasses in certain limbs, moving the hand with anything smoother than jerky and abrupt motions was beyond him. He tracked the man in front of him, intent to play his handicap to its emotional extent.

Permanently seated aside the shaven child, the man finished placing the pieces in their positions from the previous day. As soon as he was done, Naruto fished a _promoted pawn_ out of danger at the expense of his knight _– an obvious opening_. The man hesitated and then pressed his advantage as was natural.

 _Misleading_ – Naruto moved a _Silver general_ while thumbing his _promoted knight_ across the board. The response from the older man was expectedly harsh and the game came to a tipping point hanging on Naruto's next move. As Naruto studied the piece in his hand, he winced to sell the pain in his efforts.

 _Feint_ – The older man smiled and leaned back into his chair, "It seems you haven't lost your touch as I feared." Naruto glanced at him for the briefest of moments before slapping the _knight_ piece far from the game's hotspot – a few squares beside his opponent's crumbling _Silver Crown_ castle.

"I believe..." The redhead reflected his opponent's posture as the whispered words left him, "It is your turn..." The disbelieving glances shot at him made the move all the more delightful – _personal triumph_ – "Sarutobi-sama."

 _Let him wonder_

"Are you sure..." A withered hand drifted above the board, bony fingers reaching for a piece. Underneath Naruto's gaze, the hand paused as if lacking direction and then shifted almost imperceptibly from side to side. "I – remember Naruto-kun, pride follows the fall." The snap accompanying the move was subtle.

 _I see everything, I know what you are doing._ Naruto's thoughts carried across with an unprecedented move made by his left hand. Sarutobi frowned at the boy who had managed to trap him yet again then smiled as pride blossomed in his core.

The sounds of wood against wood rang through the room. _Snap... snap... snap_. Quicker moves, quicker thoughts, playing the same game.

There was a pause – Naruto drifted, his hand brushing the pieces, feeling them out, breaking the comfortable pace.

 _Snap... SNAP... Snap–SNAP_ – Stupid move, not a mistake, barely a smart one, destroying composure.

 _Frustrated yet? Good_ – Without warning, Naruto arched forward and slid a rook back from its attacking position. Sarutobi saw the opening and ignored it for the safety of his _dragon horse_ piece. Just as he made that move, he realized the new strategy.

Naruto's smile would have been infuriating if it had been anything but genuine. Sarutobi saw it trace across his cheeks and relaxed far more than he should have. One could say the ensuing game resembled the sketches of an inebriated artist.

The boy's pieces flew from safety to capture and be captured. Drops were abundant on the side of the geriatric and so far, all checks had been intently avoided. Both of them were truly enjoying the nonsensical twist to the serious game till Sarutobi could no longer bear the temptation.

 _A check?_ – The ensuing frown was greeted by an apologetic chuckle from the old man. _To think I was enjoying his company._

' _That is what you get for trusting him'_

Naruto dropped a pawn right in the path of an attacking piece marking the end of Sarutobi's temporary attack. His opponent backpedaled with increasing fervor only to sink deeper in the trap. Just as Naruto promoted another rook, the room's bell went off marking an hour.

Sarutobi held up a palm to the offending nurse across the screen who took notice of the various bite marks around it. "One second..." After his carefully deliberated move, one he regretted immediately after, he sighed and gestured for the nurse to speak.

"Sarutobi-sama, the Hokage has asked that you wrap things up with the patient." Narutobi and Sarutobi broke out of the tipping stalemate and studied the open book that was Naruto's personal nurse. The graying hairs masked by dye, the scar on her left cheek covered by cosmetics, the slight tremor in her right hand – _vain, retired shinobi, post-traumatic stress disorder, possible Memai addict_.

The nurse grew unnerved, as she always did when this happened, and coughed into her palm. They tracked that too, reading insecurities and past injuries as her hand moved. The sound broke them out of the keen observation and they both looked stunned for a second before Sarutobi waved her off. She took the spectator's seat and observed their continuing shogi game from outside the window.

The battle of wits was fascinating but it was the clashing of actors that impressed her most. Sarutobi would subtly stare at the boy as the boy swung a piece into action. The patient would then breathe easily and rub a piece from his captured pool. No wasted motions. Nothing was unintentional. They were both playing the game to its fullest and playing another game beyond that.

It became apparent to her that their battle was about to close off and so she prepared to step into their room. In the closing moments, she watched as the patient took two pieces and started pressing the checkmate. The Sarutobi was not to be played with however as he dropped and interfered wherever he could.

Cold calculation versus old and experienced.

On the other side of the window, Naruto was truly amused by his opponent's longevity. He recognized the man's strategies and could trace their conclusions but there was always a peculiar twist that left him reeling. All he needed to do was keep moving his king forward till...

Then it was over. An abrupt end brought on by his blindness to his opponent's king – _Jishōgi_.

Sarutobi was unmoving for a second as he watched the boy agree to the count. In his victory over an unmoving Naruto, he could not help the nugget of wisdom that slipped out. "An army does not exist without numbers."

 _'Perhaps you should not exist'_

Just then, the nurse intruded and strolled to Naruto. She stopped beside him expectantly but he made no move to help her and so, with a small sigh, she took his hand and started to remove the bandages revealing the inked skin below. Her deft fingers avoided irritating any of the scars on the boy's pale skin as they traveled across his chest. She rolled her eyes as the boy took great care to remain stiff despite the calming coat of medical chakra around her fingers.

Even as she trailed around his skin and felt his pores open up and muscles relax, he kept still. She flicked his nipple to get him to relax. All she got was an offended hiss till she threatened his other nipple. Being able to completely free his torso, she moved to unwind the bandages around the boy's head. With a triumphant tug, she took the last layer of bandages from his head revealing the boy's closed eyes

The nurse waved a hand in front of Naruto's uncovered eyes. He could feel the change in pressure in front of his face and the shifted flow of air. There was a whiff of cinnamon and strawberry – irritating but not unpleasant. He opened his eyes revealing mismatched pupils; he could see her palm down to the microscopic creases. _I would go blind if those windows were uncovered._

He sat back as the nurse pinched his eyelids lightly and pulled them away from his oculus. She fitted membranous lenses through an incision in his eyelids allowing them to fall neatly over his eyeballs. The lenses tampered with his vision till they completely interfaced with his eyes allowing him control over its functions.

He blinked multiple times.

A curt nod followed once he was satisfied with the calibration; the nurse smiled before pinching Naruto's left shoulder. He frowned at her instead of wincing.

She smiled and he thought – _this woman does nothing but fuss_ , _why was she put in charge of my wellbeing?_ Naruto wasted no time in voicing his concerns, "Hiruzen, why is this hag still my nurse?" To the nurse, he sounded like a petulant child but Sarutobi heard the skepticism beneath it.

"I've told you not to be so rude Inichi-san." While he chose not to answer, the old man realized that a personnel change was long due upon hearing the nurse's warm familiar tone. Despite his desire to have someone compassionate in charge of the redhead, protocol dictated against that interpersonal bonding. "Sarutobi-sama, Hokage-dono insists you wrap things up."

A sigh and a nod from the old man told Naruto volumes and nothing at all, "How much longer?" _He will not go straight to the point as always._

"It's been a week of bed rest Naruto. What we thought was extreme insomnia is your body's natural sleep pattern." _Five hours of sleep following a week of inactivity is natural?_ "Warhead-ichiji has pushed your recovery forward. Apparently, further tests cannot be carried out without physical activity and as such, in two days you'll begin intensive training."

The nurse made to protest, a testament to her innate compassion, but Naruto's acquiescence and Hiruzen's stern glare stopped whatever she was about to say.

"That will be all then, Asuna." The nurse shifted her cap as she walked to the wheelchair bound geriatric to wheel him out of the room. When they were gone, Naruto rolled out of his bed and fell beside it. With two arms propped below, he started his calisthenics exercise routine.

 _One more day... One... Two... Three..._

— **N: O —**

"Forty-seven! Forty-eight! Forty-Nine! Fifty! UP!" Naruto shot up causing the weighted loads to fall off his back. Sweat canvassed his face and drenching his outfit – a thin red bodysuit with white stripes running down his shoulders to his wrists and ankles. His instructor, a short muscled woman with a peculiar bowl cut on her head, yelled at him with a passionate fervor "Thirty laps around the ring! The good doctor needs your blood pumping and your youth flowing."

"Yes Mai-sensei," Naruto ground out through the pain in his limbs. That pain doubled as the warmers on his ankles glowed and weighed him down as he ran.

The stomps Naruto made as he ran woke the dozing Sarutobi. The old man wondered how he had dozed off until he remembered asking the nurse for a massage. He glanced at said nurse who was leaning over the balcony overlooking the enclosed field Naruto trained in.

Eliza von Abendroth, strange last name, her mother's. Half foreigners were not usually allowed access into their Medic Training Academy but Eliza's birth was anything but usual. Her family, inexplicably linked to the Uzumaki clan, had fallen into disarray like the other vassals of the now infamous clan. Her mother had been a travelling saleswoman before settling down with her father, one of the democracy-seeking tyrants in the council room. Sarutobi remembered their spats inside the council room fondly – the Night of Horrors had taken many good souls from that room; left the rotten ones.

After the night, Eliza had been left under the care of a broken widow, finding reprieve only in her schooling. She had also been left quiet and unable to see beyond six feet in front of her. Her chakra, specially attuned to the medical arts, was the only thing that kept her in school. Afterwards, she was left out of team selections as all those who were connected to the Uzumaki. It was only by the grace of a filing error that she was chosen as Naruto's new nurse.

At first, Hiruzen had been suspicious like everyone else on Warhead-Ichiji. However, after the month since his training started, it became apparent that she had been the perfect choice, cold and impersonal but dominant and (most importantly to Hiruzen) compassionate.

The old man looked on as Naruto completed his laps and dropped to his knees, having been shunted out of his thoughts by the sound of winds through phantom leaves – the sound of a _shunshin_. He looked on as Eliza knelt beside the boy (the skirt of the uniform accentuated her rear end, Sarutobi noted perversely) and started her routine of diagnostic and calming jutsu.

He thought back to the first diagnostics result Eliza had brought him.

"He has higher blood pressure than I expected. Of course, this is higher than that of an older shinobi. His blood vessels have thicker walls and a wider lumen; I expect he has a larger quantity of blood as well."  
 _Her artificial voice had a monotone quality to it, unfortunate for the Sarutobi as it masked any emotions the word would carry – he assumed she was excited given how all that was said in a single breath,  
_ "About his tattoos, they are layers of peculiar seal matrices around his limbs and torso. The peculiarity lies in its functions. They served to coordinate and disrupt brain function, to build and destroy cells and I believe to hamper biogenesis and proper metabolism at the deepest level."  
 _Of course, he was aware of all this and so was visibly unconcerned which alerted the girl to skip the details,  
_ "I could remove the superficial layers but you should employ the services of an expert to permanently remove them. The scarring can be turned into docks that can be written over, maybe new beneficial seals."  
 _Her neck quirked whenever her train of thoughts changed, throwing the bun of strawberry blonde hair around – a funny little quirk reminiscent of her late father's own.  
_ "There's also the matter of–"

"–tobi-sama!" He jerked awake from his reminiscence to find the blonde nurse leaning over his wheelchair with an eyebrow quirked in bemusement. She moved back and he realized she had wheeled him over to field.

On the field, Naruto balanced his trainer on his shoulders as he moved through a complicated set of kata. The Sarutobi patriarch saw each second, each movement, shifting from pose to pose – his form was perfect save for the signs of the nerve damage in his left hand. Speaking of his sensei...

A month ago, Hiruzen had protested the choice of one of the extreme Maito triplets as Naruto's trainer, especially since it was Maito Mai, an inferno among the firebrands of her brothers. Like her brothers, her training regiment involved exponentially increasing the burden of tasks after every failure. Like Eliza, she had grown on him with her odd manner of speech and (youthful!) exuberance. To Naruto, however, the woman must have seemed the devil incarnate.

The results of a month of training showed in the dense muscles buried underneath heavily tattooed skin. The power trapped within them was buried even further by the new seals that acted primarily to keep his oxytocin levels high – an unfortunate but necessary measure in the wake of his recent outbursts.

Hiruzen did not notice the nurse leave and return till she was waving a rolled up paper in front of his face. He snatched it from her; half-annoyed at her for catching him half-awake, partly at his own failing mind. His annoyance did not stop him from reading the letter now unrolled in his hand and sighing.

He found Naruto staring curiously at him when he was done with the letter, "It looks like it's finally time for your psych-evaluation, Naruto-kun." He found himself sympathizing with the boy's eye roll.

— **N: O —**

"There are crazy people and there are people like that child in that room!" An irate Kashii Shōto yelled as he gestured wildly at the one-way mirror with one hand. The other cradled his bandaged head and wiped the blood leaking from the edges.

The other occupant of the room looked through the mirror at the redhead slouching on the only upright chair in the room. Blood that was not his own dripped from his smiling lips and he made no effort to clean it off.

"Take him off his meds they said. He'll cooperate, they said. Fuc–"

"You realize he can see us... right?" The woman finally spoke breaking the flow of her compatriot's rant.

He stumbled over his next words and rushed to the window to find the boy's eyes drifted to his. He stared at the boy then at the window and back at the boy. It was probably the knowing grin that set him off, his compatriot could not fathom why else he had tried to rush into the opposite room. She looked at his downed body and looked back to see the redhead smile and wink childishly at her.

 _Great, now I have to deal with the psycho prepubescent child on my_ own... Anko thought exasperated before craning her neck and smiling, an action mirrored by the boy in the room,

 _Again._

 _Uzumaki-dono, I have a question; how do you know these people so well? Down to what they were feeling. I know you said 'all will–'_

 _All will be revealed in time, Keiko-chan, now pay attention, you do not want to miss this._

 _Of course._

"So how have you been Inichi-kun?"

 _Say nothing to this woman,_ "..."

"Your eyes say 'I've been well Anko-sama, how about you?' but your fingers... your fingers say... HENTAI!"

 _Stop smiling now,_ "..."

"Oh? Is that a smile I see? No? Okay then – if you're sure. To answer your eyes – I've been good myself; the best in fact. To your little fingers – you know me too well."

 _Do not–_ "Do you know what this does?"

"I take it you mean the seal on the back of your neck that keeps you on cloud nine? Yes, I know what it does and before you ask, I did not recommend that."

"I know, I was not going to ask. I simply wanted you to remove it."

"You know I can't–"

"Then we are done here."

"Come on Inichi-chi, there's no reason... well maybe there is some reason but –but! We don't have to fight here..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

Anko sighed as she leaned back into her chair. The first squeak was echoed by one from Naruto's chair as he too sat down. She stared at him and he stared right back.

Squeak... Squeak... Squeak... Squeak.

And so the game of rocking chairs was on.

Squeak.

— **N: O —**

"Two hours... You spent two hours in that room _playing_ ," Purple hair curtained Anko's countenance annoying her superior further, "Look at me, Mitarashi! This is your job on the line here." Anko looked up startled, the sly smirk falling off her face.

"H-hold on Ibiki, what do you mean my job?" The betrayed look on her face pulled the wind from the taller man's sails. Said look turned into one of rage, "I have given years of my life to this division. You can't just throw me to the side because-because–"

"I'm afraid we can Mitarashi-san," A silky voice seeped in from the shadows, "After all, we of the Warhead-Ichiji, own the Intelligence Division."

Anko sneered hatefully at the man in the corner, "You! You've been trying to get me out of the force since I started working here. It's been years Orochimaru, why are you _still_ haunting me?!" The man chuckled as he stepped into the light.

White light illuminated the white scaly skin and yellow grin of the tall bald man, "Why? Oh my dear snakelet, you should know I always keep my promises." Both of them remembered keenly their separation after the Night of Horrors.

"So you're really going to have me thrown out on my arse then? Despite _all_ my work, despite every single thing I've done. I should–"

A single finger was all the blond behind the desk needed to raise for the hubbub to cease. His voice was calm, "I have reviewed the tape and while Anko-san shirked her responsibilities, she did bond with the child, apparent through the childish show of affection from both parties. While I am surprised as any of you, I have heard your council and I have made my decision." He smiled as he looked away from the dark slits of Orochimaru to the orange pupils of Anko, "Anko-san,"

"Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"Effective immediately, you will act as Naruto's primary therapist. You will report solely to me now. Hiruzen-sama will fill you in on your new responsibilities." While Orochimaru looked vexed, Anko was simply perplexed.

"Naruto? Who is Naruto?"

* * *

 _And so Naruto met his next ally._

 _Next? Who was the first?_

 _Keiko-chan... Did you not pay attention?_

 **— N: O —**

"So Eliza-chan! How's your love life?" The pinch that answered the question made Mai yelp and Naruto snigger. Then he was pinched as well for laughing.

* * *

 _That's all?_

 _Well... yes? What more do you need? Eliza was a girl of few words, Mai was a woman of many._

 _Okay then, I'll take your word for it. So Mai was his trainer, Eliza – his medic; Anko is his... therapist. You mentioned-_

 _Ah yes, his handler..._

— **N: O —**

' _It's been two weeks Naruto. Two weeks we have been stuck in this derelict dump with a faceless handler who comes and goes like a damned phantom. You promised us results and now... Now we are going stir-crazy. Stir-crazy!'_

 _'Shut up Fukiage, you'll wake the others up. Naruto, Fukiage has a point – despite his incessant whining, you are being wasted. There should be a way to appeal your inactive status, usually it would confirm a forced retirement but–)_

 _'These are not matters for civilians to advice on. Naruto-sama isn't a normal Shinobi, this should evident by now.'_

"Could all of you please keep things quiet up there?"

' _Perhaps you should come here and-'_

 _'Do not presume to threaten Naruto-sama, you filthy dog.'_

 _'Uzuki-san, please, nothing will be solved by fighting.'_

"Be _quiet_ , we–I have company..." Naruto relaxed his cross-legged stance and without opening his eyes greeted the masked man in front of his bed,

A tense silence pervaded the bare room after the man returned his greeting. The man faced down the boy until they spoke at the same time.

"Please, Uchiha-san, go first." Naruto offered.

"Naruto-san, your observation period is over – has been over since a few hours ago. This is your new standard outfit." The man dropped a bundle of dark clothes on the bed in front of Naruto and dropped a mask beside them, "I am... your handler for the foreseeable future."

With a sigh, the man sat on the chair beside the bed – _unprofessional,_ Naruto opened a single eye and saw everything about the man down to his clear youth. The only reason the young man had even sat down was because of the bandages on Naruto's eyes.

' _Look how vulnerable he is around you. You should slit his throat Naruto just to teach him a lesson.'_

Naruto sighed in irritation and made to speak. Just then the right side of the Uchiha's mask lit up as its in-built comm received a transmission request. He put a finger against the side of the mask to receive the call

Within the minute it was received, the call was ended; Naruto's handler shot to his feet and turned to the boy to see him getting dressed in his new outfit. Naruto tapped his ears to convey that he had heard the call and needed no further directives.

' _Multiple breaches in the Hyūga, Asahina and Kurama compounds; kidnappings; this has the Iwa written all over it.'_

"Whoever it is, they won't be alive for very long."

' _Ah, that's what I like to hear.'_

— **N: O —**

Nitoriku Jin clutched his bandaged arm stump and groaned as he slumped against the cave wall. Through blurry vision, he made out the remnants of his team – everyone seemed to be moaning or seriously wounded and growing... horns. He shook his head to clear the hallucinations and found the team leader standing over him when he opened his eyes.

 _What is that cursed ringing?_

Jim's superior said something but it was a mumble to Jin's clouded mind. When Jin ignored him, he slammed his hand into the wall, "Damn it boy, get up and go do your job!"

The icy glare Jin shot at the captain fell on the man's back and stayed there till the man started to sprout flowers from his ears and his hand turned to branches. Jin shook his head once then twice before deciding a walk outside might be the best thing for his failing mental state.

After focusing chakra throughout his body, he took a glance at the hostages cramped at the other end of the cave. He counted three adult women and sixteen children; all unconscious on a bed of rocks... _or were they just his goats and was he safe in bed and in a horrible nightmare?_

Jin walked out of the cave and promptly walked into a tree. Seeing the tree for the prime real estate that it was, he chose to lean against it and nod at the teammates who walked up to him to talk regardless of what they said. With ears full of ringing and a brain caught up with pain, Jin did not hear the order to move deeper into the creepy forest.

 _The ringing is getting louder._

The creepy forest had creepy trees and creepy animals and to Jin's addled mind, both moved towards him and whispered things. Most importantly (to him at least), there were red dots in the darkness beyond the swinging singing trees. Red dots that seemed to shift every few seconds, which was unnatural for red dots to do but these dots had not seemed to get the memo. Their confused Brownian motion was decidedly more important than the fact that he could not move.

Faintly he heard muted screams in the deeper parts of the forest – hold on if he was in the deeper part of the forest... where did that place the screams?

With every second he stayed next to the tree, Jin found it harder to keep his eyes open. Suddenly, he sensed a presence behind him, something dangerous and... short, very short, shorter than him. Even as the entity stepped closer, Jin was captivated by the height of the possible enemy behind him.

 _Ringing!_

"Ah!" With the last of his strength, Jin threw a punch behind him,

And summarily had his hand chewed off at the wrist eliciting a much louder, drawn out scream before an ungraceful faint to the floor. His body shook and his mouth spewed a train of curses as he was seized by a fit.

"This has been a pathetic joust... why exactly did they need me? Oh yes, this is the Hason... after all. Huh, this fellow... how... still alive?"

As the ringing reached its highest frequency, Jin felt an enormous amount of pain...

Found a brief moment of clarity – _That was-_

And then his head exploded showering his annoyed attacker with gore and grey matter.

— **N: O —**

As Sarutobi Hiruzen soon found out as Naruto entered the Hason forest, sending a WMD out on a test run sends a lot of people into an uneasy frenzy. Especially since the forest interfered with any communication devices.

Even he, who was the boy's most avid supporter, made to check his watch every few minutes.

01:32

Hiruzen would usually be resting at the Sarutobi main house so early in the morning. Instead he found himself fifteen meters away from the closed off Dead Read outskirts in a group of various jonin, clan heads and medics.

The Anbu present reactivated the barrier jutsu closing off the decaying sector of the city after Naruto disappeared into the darkness beyond the bulbous trees growing into the outer and inner walls.

01:35

"How long is this going to take Sarutobi-sama?" While the Asahina clan head knew better than to address the Hokage he was standing beside so rudely, his wheelchair bound advisor was not off-limits

Hiruzen sighed at the noble gentleman who looked out of place in his morning robes, "Don't fret too much Ishi-sama," Knowing the civilian clan head cared little for the clan members he had lost, Hiruzen cared little about calming his nerves.

"Well-" When Ishi noticed the stern glares from the Shinobi clan heads and his Hokage, all further complaints he may have had died in his throat. Sarutobi held back a chuckle and checked his pocket watch again.

01:40

That was when the screams started.

It took two Jonin to hold Murakumo Kurama, the Kurama clan head, from running into the irradiated forest while the screams continued for the better part of –

01:47

–Six minutes.

When the screams ended, everyone looked even tenser as the seconds ticked past.

01:49

The Hokage raised five fingers that set the time limit for Naruto's mission – no more than five minutes.

01:52

"There! The boy is back!" Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they beheld the redhead walk triumphantly through the gap in the inner wall. Many of those sighs of relief turned into retches as the boy's decaying skin came into view.

Once outside the barrier, Naruto dropped the large scroll latched onto his back and it rolled open. Jonin around him channeled chakra into the scroll and a large cloud erupted from the scroll. When it cleared, a pile of unconscious bodies lay on the floor.

With everyone concerned with tending to the health of the hostages and incarcerating the kidnappers, nobody noticed Naruto's bloodied clothes... or perhaps they did and avoided him entirely. The boy nodded once at Hiruzen who felt the grimly smiling mask fit Naruto perfectly.

Hirzuen nodded back and watched as Naruto and his handler quietly left the site. It was time for a debriefing.

— **N: O —**

"Then I killed their captain before he could execute any of the hostages and before he could continue his asinine monologue. Most of the team was delirious and invalid but the leader seemed to be especially resistant. Oh and then I sealed everyone in the special scroll." With those words, Naruto completed his narration of the last hour's events

"Well then, congratulations on completing your first mission as a team, Naruto-san; Itachi-san " A silver haired man, Hatake Kakashi, said to unmasked duo standing before him and the rest of the Warhead-Ichiji, "I'm happy to report that all the hostages were recovered safely." The man's jovial tone was followed by a long silence.

"May we be excused then?" Itachi calmly prodded after thirty seconds of silence.

"No, you may not," The Hokage spoke and paused to glance at Naruto who stared back, "In lieu of this recent attack, the Council has advanced its Kūdetā Bōshi plan. You two will play a vital role in the assassination of the masterminds behind our impending coup d'etat."

* * *

 _A coup?_

 _Yes, the reason the attack on the Leaf City was so effective was because the attackers slipped into the cracks created by the growing political instability, or at least that's what the council thought._

 _So who were these masterminds then?_

 _Well you should find the records in the Hall... start with the name 'Uchiha Fugaku'._

— **N: O —**

Jishogi - Impasse

Hason - corrupted

Kūdetā Bōshi - Coup D'etat Prevention

 **This took longer than I expected. Probably because I had to fill an outline and did not have as much creative freedom.  
Anyways, it's finally here and I hope you enjoy it. A schedule for uploads will be put on my bio so you can check that out or just put my story on your alert list if you want.  
As always, leave a review and tell me what you thought.**

 **Till next time,  
** **TGE.**


	5. Four: Kudeta Boshi I

**Chapter :Four: Kudeta Boshi (I)**

— **N: O —**

 _That will be all for this month, I expect all of you to perfect the fifth through sixteenth techniques by next session._

 _Thank you, Uzumaki-dono._

 _..._

 _..._

 _What a stolid crowd... Why all of you are still here?_

 _You said you'd tell us about a story about a coup since Keiko was telling it wrong, Uzumaki-dono._

 _Oh yes, yes. Well then, I will tell this as is conventional – from the only sides that matter. I expect no interruptions._

— **N: O —**

Uzuki Yuuto looked down at the silent baby in his arms with pity. Before the night ended, the boy would join the clan ancestors – another life taken by the curse on their line. He watched silently as the baby's chest rose and fell unevenly.

In the last eight years, he had seen this happen too many times to count and as such, knew what would happen within the next hour. The bundle of vein-like tubes that had formed around the baby's vertebra would soon travel to his brain and heart and both organs would cease functioning. The tubes bulged under the baby's paper-thin skin, leaving tristichous black trails on the surface.

The baby grasped blindly at the air, reaching to feed. There would be no sustenance for him, not the type he needed to ease him to his death. And without an Uzumaki clan head, the boy would not wake up from his eternal sleep; yet another corpse of the Uzuki clan, the once-famous servants of the Uzumaki.

Yuuto chuckled drily startling the only other person in the room – his secretary, who had grown used to the silence that pervaded the room once the baby's mother left. She wiped her cheeks once more and glanced at her wristwatch.

19:07 – she made to alert her superior of the appointment that was impending.

The knock at the door beat her to it so instead, she apologized profusely and rushed to slide the door open. An albino snake slid through the doorway into the room and stopped behind the desk of the Uzuki clan head.

"Ussuki-ssama, the great Orochimaru hass assked if you have reconssidered your ansswer to his offer..."

Without looking up, Yuuto laid the baby on his desk and threw a silver-tipped kunai at the snake messenger. The projectile sailed past its lowered head and struck the dark wood floor behind it with a resounding thud. "I told you not to come back here beast, tell your master that the Uzuki clan will never allow our bloodline to be... desecrated!"

The snake hissed back a curse before it sped out of the room, past the secretary who had never closed the door. She had expected the violent response but, "Did you have to throw the kunai this time? We already have enough trouble keeping the lights on..." She glared frustrated at the kunai sticking out the floor.

With a pitiful sigh, Yuuto waved his hand and his four decorated fingers followed random patterns in mid-air. The kunai dislodged itself from the floor and flew back to his hand. The secretary's eyes widened as brown ringed pupils followed each strand of wooden floor realigning then settled on her brother's stressed face. She walked over to him.

Slap

Yuuto yelped at the stinging pain on the back of his scalp. He furiously glanced at the young woman and noticed the tears in her eyes. Before she could start fussing – probably about the danger of using his ability for such trivialities – he walked to her and hugged her.

"It's going to be alright Yuri..." It was a lie; a bold-faced one at that. But lies had to be told to preserve the innocence of the innocent.

His years as an active shinobi had seen him through many harrowing things; had prepared him for what was coming but his twenty years as a sibling had given him a strong distaste to the sight of his sister hurt in any manner – her previous lover could attest to that.

It was this strong affection that kept him from slitting the wrists of the few Uzuki clan members that remained – hurrying along the process. But he could never hurt his sister and had resigned himself to witnessing to the clan's slow death.

The baby on the table twitched violently and its pained screams pierced the silence in the room, filling their sensitive ears and shattering Yuri's facade. Her sobs rang deep in Yuuto's head and he had no idea who to hurt to make things better.

'Yes... you do'

So maybe he did, but he was not stupid. The Uzuki clan would serve no one now that the Uzumaki were long dead.

* * *

 _Before their fall, the Uzuki loyalty to their Uzumaki masters was rivaled only by the Ibi. Like the oneirocritical Ibi, the death of the Uzumaki matriarch had devastated their clan. The lack of an Uzumaki clan head created a gap in their life cycle and left them macilent. Speaking of withering,_

— **N: O —**

Kakashi Hatake pored over the letter in his hand for the final time as he picked up an envelope. The green envelope was proudly emblazoned with the Hokage's seal of confidentiality over a large Konohagakure Military Police logo in its center. Underneath the seal were the words: 'High Priority Transfer; To The Department of Counterintelligence' in bold print.

He folded the letter neatly into the envelope, sealed the flap and sat back in his chair, resigning himself to wait for the messenger.

Although Kakashi could send the letter digitally over their encrypted network, every time he did so, he remembered the year he had spent in Yuki no Kuni – living under their so-called 'democratic technocracy' – a harrowing experience that had shaped his view of both civilian governments and drastic technological advancement.

" _Abhorrent concepts"_ – as Danzō would say. And yet, while he shared this concern with the Internal Spymaster, he was not Danzō – far from it, in fact. He knew–

Knock–knock–knock

Kakashi's first instinct was to allow the guest in but a glance at the small monitor on his desk showed that his visitor was Mitokado Homura. A tired sigh escaped his lips just before his open palm could find his face. With his face still buried in his hand, the white-haired man pressed the button beneath his desk which opened the door to reveal the council member.

"Catching a nap on the job are we?" Geriatric though his body may be, Homura's voice had a rich tone to it. A tone enriched by years of usage in political conflicts and sharpened by a mind that held uncountable secrets. A voice that annoyed Kakashi to no end lately but his face stayed perfectly passive even as he propped the chin on his fist and spoke.

"Is there a reason we're meeting outside council grounds?" Kakashi knew the question was blunt but he was withered from yet another day acting as Head of Ne in Danzō's absence.

Speaking of Danzo, that was probably the reason why Homura was here, "I have a letter from your... predecessor." Again, Danzō found a way to ruin his day. Kakashi stared at the scroll in the man's hand suspiciously as Homura approached him. "It contains all his appointments for the next week and I really believe you should look at the suggestions in–"

Kakashi waved, effectively cutting out the droning.

"Mitokado-senpai..." As usual, he spoke carefully and slowly knowing that he had to be careful with his words lest he set himself off, "You realize that Danzō Shimura is currently, as we speak, under investigation for much more than that incident with the jinchuriki... right?"

Homura stopped in his tracks and shot an inspecting gaze at the silver-haired man. A nod allowed Kakashi to continue.

"And you know that means that his many _many_... transactional agreements are under review?" Another slow nod, "So, in light of this, why would I, or rather why should I, be faithful to his appointments? One would think your mind finally succumbed to the years of wisdom it's gathered."

A look of anger briefly took hold of the elder's wrinkled face as he heard the mocking tone in Kakashi's voice. As quickly as it left, a snarl followed, "Do not patronize me, boy."

Kakashi's only answer was to point at the grey door and say, "That is the exit, I advise you use it."

For a few seconds, no one moved and Homura glared at Kakashi's extended hand, obviously contemplating his next move. With remarkable fervor for his age, the elder spun on his heel and threw open the door. His parting words left Kakashi glaring at the door even as Itachi slipped in from the window.

As he handed the envelope to the young operative, the Hatake took a deep breath to clear his mind – something he would never do in front of any other operative. "You know where to take this. After delivery, you're to report to Uchiha Inabi of Counterintelligence in the morning and begin the first phase of your mission. You have seven days till the meeting."

"Yes, Kakashi-sama, that's understood." Was Itachi's response as he bowed and left the room; if the white-haired man could think of anything but Homura's last words, he would have noticed the exhaustion in the boy's voice. His keen mind sought to, instead, torment him with those words.

"How long do you think you'll last Kakashi-san? How long before you end up like your late father?"

— **N: O —**

REGARDING YOUR CONCERNS,

Rest assured, W-Ichiji will deal swiftly with whatever circumstances may arise within the year. To assist your efforts, two of our most promising operatives have been assigned to your division; one of whom will be disguised for the duration of the assignment (Find attached, destructible copies of their profiles). Under no circumstances should the two be separated without prior notice. In the event of any breaches of confidence, W-Niji has a safehouse prepared for your family

* * *

 _Should you ever face such an exauctorating dilemma in the future, your current identity should be disposed of immediately. Never trust a document of assurance if it has no obvious blood seals – NEVER._

— **N: O —**

 _ **Day One - Morning**_

As he accompanied Itachi on the way through the grand Military Police Headquarters compound, Naruto considered many things. One of those things was the name of their new team member. The name 'Shisui', as Naruto noted worriedly, did not sound particularly exciting. He knew if he shared this concern with the ever polite Itachi, it would be written off as rude so he did just that.

"Senpai," Naruto found that the honorific came to him much easier (a natural effect of the month spent in his care).

" _Inichi_ -san, I insist you use our codenames for the duration of this operation." Naruto also noted quite ecstatically that Itachi's usual even tone trembled under the weight of emotional stress (and naturally, that month had a price) _._ "What is it you wanted to say?"

"Do you know this _Shishroom_ person we are supposed to meet?" The mispronunciation was a facet of Naruto's newfound obsession with annoying Itachi - after all, Itachi's irritation brought him clarity.

A sigh followed his question.

"I have met him, briefly, and I may have heard about him in passing – a gem of the police force – but I doubt that's what you're asking so no, I do not. And, I believe, his name is Shisui, not... Not whatever you called him."

Coming to a junction in the paved road they were on, Itachi took a left so Naruto took a left. Both turned onto another road splitting a large green field in two. The road ended at the stairs leading to the entrance of a large building. An incomplete polygonal dome rose from behind the building, splitting the rays from a setting sun around it – _a real modern monstrosity_.

The impressive building had many square windows around it as well as two stone pillars rising from inside it; one supporting various satellite dishes and the other fitted with hundreds of message tubes. Naruto pointed at the fountain that lay to the left of the pathway as they passed by it. "Do you think that water is... p-p..." He struggled for the word.

"Potable? Of course not. It would be if run from the Leaf Lake but it doesn't. It is artificially produced from the Silver Pashem beneath it." Itachi raised a hand from behind him to point at a spot on the green grass, "Right about there."

As he followed Itachi through the main doors, Naruto whispered to himself – (or rather the entities in him) – "Silver? There's more than one type of P-Crystal?"

The response was blunt.

' _There is only one true type. The others are bastardized and processed. Silver, in particular, flips the natural chakra-material cycle tits over arse.'_

It was so harshly toned that the resident serial killer, Ōtomo Fukiage, spoke up. _'What crawled up yours and died Shigemi?'_

Itachi glanced back just in time to watch horrified as Naruto threw his arms apart and spun, attracting the attention of everyone else on the main floor. _I believe this was his... former_

"Place of work!"

Everyone on the floor, seated and standing, stared at the duo as Itachi grabbed Naruto's hand and dragged him across the large main hall and into the elevator.

* * *

"If it isn't Fugaku's brat finally returned to the fold," A middle-aged man with graying black hair falling around his shoulder scoffed at them as they walked into his large, sparsely decorated office, "and I take it that... child behind you is your partner... How disgraceful. Warhead just pushing their way through regardless of procedure; when will they learn?"

"Where–" Itachi raised a hand to prevent Naruto from interrupting the man's monologue with his impatient question. The man, however, took Naruto's attempted query as insubordination and pounced.

"Something you want to say, runt? Maybe you'd like to speak up. And get that fucking hat off your head, you're in the presence of the Captain of –"

"Are you this bitchy with all your new recruits or is this some kind of test? I read in a book that people who scream a lot have low self-esteem." Of course, Naruto had read no such thing but by the way the man's heart rate had quickened, he knew he could get under the man's skin within their seven-day stay. And there was no way he was taking off his beanie.

No one said anything for a good forty-three seconds as Itachi died a little inside and Naruto internally chuckled as he observed the man's reddening brow.

"Uchiha-Tai–" Itachi began damage-control, only to be harshly interrupted by his new superior.

"Be quiet boy, be very quiet. I know why you two are here. Warhead does this shit every few years; plants a few of their people; expect us to roll with their stupid fucking directives and spill our sensitive secrets. They've already ruined the _Ninja Keiji-bu_ and the _Kenpei-tai_ but not us! Not _Han Chinō_!"

Just as he finished his rant, a young man walked in with a serene smile plastered across his face. "Inabi-san, please do not yell at my new teammates so much." Inabi scoffed and slammed a hand on the table but said nothing else. Shisui nodded pleased, "Itachi-san, Inichi-san, please forgive our dear Captain. He's a very passionate man."

' _Passionate? He's a blottesque... philistine!_ ' Someone, obviously Shigemi, chimed in and Naruto let out a chuckle at the sheer bitterness behind it.

Itachi spoke quickly to prevent Naruto from talking, "Shisui-san. It is a pleasure to meet you and we look forward to working with you." Before he could bow respectfully in return, Naruto poked a finger to his side forcing an awkward jerk.

Inabi chuckled at the sight before catching himself, "Alright, that's enough! Get the fuck out of my office, all of you!" Without another word, the new team of three walked out of the man's office.

Once outside, Shisui led them down the hall to the last door of the many doors to their left. Opening the door revealed a blue-walled office that was smaller than Inabi's. Inside it was two desks, one of which had been recently installed against the left wall. The other desk, a messier brown one, was facing the door and the wall on the right was fitted with two silver file cabinets. Above Shisui's desk was a glass sliding window that let in the dome-scattered rays of light.

Shisui pointed at the new black-topped desk at the side with a lamp and a small chair, "Itachi-san, your new workstation. Please, feel free to customize the space above it and around it to your liking." Shisui addressed the beanie-wearing boy next to Itachi kindly, "Inichi-san, I apologize for the lack of a chair for you. I thought I would take you two on a tour of the facilities while we wait for the order I made to arrive."

Naruto found the man's words disengaging so he went to test the waters with a backhanded: "Are you always this dull?"

Shisui, instead of reacting adversely, simply laughed and scratched his scalp.

"You'll have to forgive my partner; he has a lot of... pent-up aggression." At the last word, Naruto glared momentarily at Itachi, an action that did not go unnoticed by Shisui. Their superior officer raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"No worries, my wife calls me dull; then again, she also says she hates me once or twice a month so I don't exactly trust her." He laughed again while Naruto looked up at him with a strange glint in his mismatched eyes – _the man was either totally sincere or an accomplished liar._

Said eyes blinked several times as Naruto's keen ears picked up nothing but calm when Shisui brushed off a rude comment about his wife's 'possibly failing mental state'. Even Itachi's pace had quickened after the comment so Naruto could not understand why this new partner of theirs seemed so unaffected by his usual tactics.

Naruto remembered Nurse Von Abendroth's cryptic words about how he would meet his match one day with his inflammatory personality on full tilt. He had disregarded her words but when his third slur washed over Shisui with all the effect of a marshmallow, he started to grow excited.

He wondered how long it would take for him to crack this Shisui's shell and how much fun he would have once that happened. While caught up in his reverie, Naruto missed the briefing on their mission as, internally, Shigemi begged him to focus.

To Naruto, all that mattered was breaking the facades and if the Leaf burnt to the ground beforehand, he was totally fine with that.

* * *

 _As Naruto embarked on his first-ever tour, he realized the security in the ultra-modern building was much more than anticipated. Without a security pass, he could not access any floor above the third even though Shisui's office was on the fourth. He learned of the database of biometrics the hard way after receiving a particularly nasty shock when he snuck off to the library guided by the voice of Shigemi.  
Even Itachi's Sharingan fell short at the scanners regardless of how many patterns they cycled through. With their lanyards one day to arrive, they had to keep within close proximity to Shisui during their tour.  
Situated in the middle of a controlled forest, the headquarters had five floors, a large training ground behind it, and a basement with underground tunnels leading to each part of the City.  
At the end of the tour, and with only an hour before nightfall, Shisui introduced the duo to their quarters – a quaint room within a much larger residential block, conveniently situated a mile away from the headquarters. The next day was much more... Inaniloquent._

— **N: O —**

 _ **Day Two - Morning**_

After what amounted to an entire morning of Naruto being the cause of Itachi's many sighs, Itachi being ogled by many officers who knew of his noble heritage and Shisui guiding the two through a long list of bureaucratic processes to complete their registration, Naruto fingered his lanyard, having grown tired of pretending to read the bar codes on it after his first memorization of them, as he followed Itachi and Shisui back to their office.

During the tour from yesterday, Naruto had noted keenly that Shisui avoided the third floor and excused himself to an office on the fifth floor. Each attempt at tailing had failed as doors that should have stayed open abruptly closed and he was chased back to the office by security – _why did a police headquarters have dedicated security anyways?_

After gaining his lanyard, Naruto had tried to explore but an obstacle stood out to him on his first attempt: his lanyard was fitted with a tracker and had very limited security access, even on the fourth floor where their office was. He could not move more than thirty meters from Itachi or Shisui without setting its alarm protocol off.

To be fair, which he was not, Itachi had a similar tracker outfitted in the new badge on his shoulder – he just was not aware of it. And the official police uniform was stupid – (' _who wears vests underneath their shirts anyways')_

Come to think of it, he should probably tell Itachi about that. ' _It would be prudent to do so soon to ensure the success of the mission_ ' Yugao, who had replaced the whining Shigemi from yesterday, added as he followed his partners into their office.

"And why should I care about this... mission?" He whispered back, despite complete knowledge of her patriotic stance on the matter.

Her reasoning went unheard as he focused on the new addition to the office.

It was a chair. It seemed to be made of silvered metal bars and sharp edges and had been placed in the corner of the room. He looked suspiciously at Shisui who slowly took his place behind the large desk.

 _It is a..._ "...chair? You ordered a chair?"

Shisui held up a finger to keep the duo from speaking or moving before speaking directly to Naruto, "Twelve times. Twelve times today you've compromised this team. Do you want me to list them to you?" At Naruto's bewildered silence, he continued, "One, your insubordinate behavior, especially towards Itachi. Two, you wander off. Three, you betray your ANBU training in front of possibly compromised officers. Four..."

 _What?_

Naruto frowned, "I did not–"

"You will be quiet when I am talking, Naruto." The surprised boy glanced at Itachi who sympathetically stared back; Shisui continued, "I am not Itachi. I am not your parents. I owe you nothing and I will not promote this _childishness_. Regardless of your age, you are an officer of the Military Police so act like it. Otherwise, you and I will be at odds for as long as we remain a team. And make no mistake; I am the head of this team. Now, sit down."

An awkward silence filled the room as Naruto and Itachi stared at Shisui whose blood-red eyes stared back unflinchingly. As the seconds ticked away, Naruto's internal debate warped into turmoil and he found himself mechanically marching towards the chair.

"Itachi, stop. Let Naruto decide." Naruto's body stopped moving of its own accord and he turned to glare at Itachi instead who gracefully took a seat. Shisui stared at the redhead's still frame knowing that repeating the order to sit would only serve to increase tension. "Instead of being angry and suspicious all the time, Naruto, dwell on something else; like your purpose... and not only to this team or to the Village."

Naruto opened his mouth to speak but the words escaped him. Even his voices held no advice for him. This strange feeling – _one of loneliness_ – scared him and he started to fidget.

"Perhaps we should let off some steam. We will meet you at the training ground below." With wide eyes and heavy breaths, Naruto turned and all but ran out of the office. Even as he left, he heard Itachi voice his concerns.

"Was that wise, Shisui-senpai? Letting him off the hook like that?" Shisui's answer went unheard to him.

* * *

' _If you treat him as you would a wild dog, he will eventually chew off his leash and then we will have a much bigger problem on our hands than a few detractors...'  
...I am truly still unaware as to whether Shisui held some clairvoyant ability or was just a very shrewd person. But his influence threatened that of the antediluvian entity that took shelter in Naruto.  
That, however, has no bearing on the Coup. Speaking of..._

— **N: O —**

 _ **Day Two - Dusk**_

Beside a paved path illuminated by ginger twilight rays, a lone figure rested his head against the tree trunk that he had been posted at. His entire posture radiated exhaustion and tedium; his blank eyes periodically slammed shut and quickly shot open raising the Konoha forehead protector he wore. The minutes passed by and the night grew closer; the man let out a long yawn.

As if on cue, a small train of carts pulled by two silver-eyed donkeys came into view from the curve. The trembling cobblestones woke the guard and, startled, he stepped in front of the donkeys. The rest of the carriages came to a stop.

He shook his head and glared at the driver, only to find that there was none. The reins lay limp below the donkeys who impassively stared ahead. The guard shivered as he noticed their glass-like eyes before realizing that he had to search for a human in order to investigate.

There were three carts in between two passenger coaches, each with a small bundle of ropes linking it to the next. The carts were covered by a silky canopy that shivered underneath the guard's touch. He shivered right back and withdrew his fingers. As he approached the carriage on the end, the guard failed to notice the white-robed figure behind him.

His curious slow steps seemed to fascinate the taller entity as it turned its head after each step he took. Both of them could hear the guard's heart beating in his chest and the stalking figure raised a hand to tap the man's shoulder and draw his attention to it. It stopped short of completing that action as the man reached the door to the last coach.

An impotent rattle sounded out as he turned the knob indicating that it had been locked. The guard started to contemplate reporting his findings to the watchtower he'd been deployed from. Then he heard the question that marked his last few mortal minutes,

"Is something wrong, Guard-san?"

He spun on his heels and jumped away with as much grace as a startled cat. The woman he now faced giggled – a sinister bubbly sound that sent shivers down his back and blushes to his cheeks. It took him a minute to locate the purple crest that proudly stained the white robes.

The woman cleared her throat and the blush on the guard's cheeks deepened as he quickly lowered his head to her, "My d-deepest apologies... milady but I do not recognize your crest."

Following his confession, there was an awkward silence and the guard tentatively raised his head to notice the noble lady curiously staring down at him. He grimaced as he was reminded of glass eyes for a second. She continued to stare and he finally caved.

Awkward and stammering he began, "N-no, it is just... the..." He looked away from her face in an effort to avoid gazing into her pink eyes. He ended up staring at her pearl necklace. "I w-would like to know what's in these carts!"

"Alright," silk gloved hand pointed at each cart as she spoke, "that one has all manner of explosives. That has enough artillery and ammunition to outfit a small army and the third contains four mega-sized sealing scrolls – one full of untouched corpses; another full of desert ash and I'm afraid the contents of the last two are top-secret."

The guard's eyes grew wider as the woman listed off contraband nonchalantly. His hands drifted to unsheathe his tantō as her hands approached his cheek. Her wide eyes blinked once and he stopped moving, feeling sick once her touch met his face.

"Ne, Guard-san, would you do me a small favor?" His mouth answered the innocent-sounding question in the affirmative and he stared in horror as the woman clapped excitedly. "Would you, please, give your heart to me?"

 _Of course not!_

"It's embarrassing, I know, but I have to get Sela a new one and yours will have to do."

His hands finally drew the short blade and he lunged.

 _Straight into the chest_

The lady smiled as blood rushed into his trachea. She stepped to the side as he stabbed again and again and again, carving a slit into his chest. His own gloved hand slowly rose and he felt more pain blossom across his ribcage as his fingers found purchase around his heart.

 _This... cannot be real._

Each attempt to pull out the frantically beating organ was accompanied by the urge to pull harder. Soon, the guard's blood-soaked shirt fell to the floor and more blood flowed from his mouth. After sixteen tugs, he finally took his last breath and

 _Pop_

Blood gushed as it always does. He knelt and presented the heart with his dying breath.

"Ah, thank you very much Guard-san. Please rest now."

— **N: O —**

 _ **Day Two - Night**_

Naruto opened his eyes, briefly revealing large crimson and jade pupils to the ceiling above. His lenses kicked in and the radiant pupils faded to a dull hazel and black ones. He blinked once and turned to glare at Itachi seated at the desk. As the seconds passed, he slowly regained control of his body.

"So much for my guaranteed autonomy eh, _senpai_?" The words were spat with vitriol; Itachi flinched. Naruto nodded, pleased that he had startled the Uchiha. Said Uchiha turned in his seat to stare impassively at Naruto before returning his gaze to his work.

This dismissal annoyed Naruto somewhat but he held his tongue.

"You will be on the field tomorrow... with Shisui," Itachi said abruptly. Naruto could tell that he had put some effort into sounding stern. Shaking his head, he tried to protest but Itachi beat him to the punch, "You are not allowed to skip on this. Try to leave and I'll have you disabled and grounded. Make things harder for Shisui, I will not hesitate to make you suffer for it."

Naruto stared.

Itachi stared back.

Then Naruto burst into a fit of giggles. The giggling continued until he started to rasp and scratch at his throat. Once he was done, he shot out of bed and jumped on the desk to loom over Itachi.

He begun in a whining voice and ended sinisterly, "What was that about, _Itachi-senpai_? It's me over here. _Na-Ru-To._ " Itachi, to his credit, barely flinched. Naruto's raw breath proved too much within seconds and he was forced away.

"I'm aware of your name, Naruto. You've made this mission and our partnership about you. I can barely focus because of your constant need for attention. Your personality is devolving and I, like Shisui, will not allow it to. Also, get off my desk."

Naruto stepped off the table slowly. He sat, or rather leaned, against the table.

Without the input of his voices, it took Naruto a long while to understand the rapid settling of power dynamics in the team,

"Why?"

Itachi fixed him with a steady gaze. "You are human, Naruto. You cannot behave like a wild... d-animal." He paused and rubbed his eye, "I am... sorry."

 _Huh_ "Wah?"

Itachi groaned. "He was right, wasn't he? No one's ever treated you like a human being."

Naruto growled back, "I don't care about what anyone thinks about me! It's all stupid lies all the time." There was nothing but pity radiating from Itachi's posture and Naruto _hated_ it. In his irritation, he could not find the words but if he had, he would have told Itachi to keep treating him like wallpaper. He would have begged Itachi to stop trying to know him. He did not know himself and with the last time he tried, he did not want to.

"Neither of us signed up to be counselor and patient but..." Itachi continued speaking but Naruto had finally noticed the distinct silence in his head. It was _jarring_. He shot a glare at Itachi.

"What did you do to me?"

"What?"

"My head! What did you do to me?!" He pulled up his shirt and pointed to his pale abdomen. Itachi raised an eyebrow, wrinkles of befuddlement forming on his forehead.

"I have no idea what you're going on about. Are you talking about your seal? Is something wrong with it?" _Widening eyes; rapid blinking; quickening heartbeat –_ Itachi was not at fault here but he was getting worried as well; if he mentioned this to the higher-ups...

Naruto's thought process was halted by the first wave of pain. The shock from the phantom stab in his liver left him slack-jawed. Naruto sunk to the floor and bent forward clutching his stomach. Itachi's words of concern washed over him without effect. Time seemed to slow down and everything was bathed in saturated grey.

After the fifth wave hit him, one thing stood out to him, he focused on the word. It slipped him and so he focused on the place, the only light – a shadowed corner behind Itachi's slowly panicking form. The word returned, he gasped...

 _Zeraleet_

And then Naruto found himself in the corner of the room. His body soon followed. And then the darkness claimed him.

— **N: O —**

 _ **Day Four - ?**_

"Naruto, let me see you do it again." Eliza quirked her head flipping blonde hair out of clear hazel eyes that eyed the monitors in front of her. Wires from that monitor traveled to the door of a room where they were tightly fixed into sockets on the door. The door led to a large room fitted with three strobe lights. All the lights concentrated on a chair with restraints. The restraints kept a sweating Naruto seated.

Sarutobi sat back on his wheelchair as he stared at Naruto beyond the glass window. A purple smoke exploded from the redhead's body, swarming each light. The powerful surge short-circuited the monitors just before its scales read at its highest output.

Naruto abruptly slammed into the window, his palms and scarred cheeks pressed hard against the cold glass. Sarutobi stared on impassively as Naruto peeled himself off the window and fell on the floor.

 _This is going nowhere._

Sarutobi's thoughts were shared by everyone outside the room, especially after watching thirty trials. Each of them ended with Naruto exhausted and in pain. The only progress being made was the discovery of a new way to ruin the mechanics of lamps.

All they learned about the technique's inner workings was that it moved Naruto's physical body to another spot in the room via transmuting it into a motile strange purple cloud that just returned to organic matter when isolated.

In truth, the elder Sarutobi (and Warhead-Ichiji) were not trying to breakdown the complex technique or study it. Their motives were much more simple and straightforward – _exploitation_. To this end, Sarutobi called Eliza over to his side as Naruto recuperated.

"Well?"

"The gas must be made up of something... particulate, it's not exactly chakra – it doesn't move through solid objects or anything semi-permeable – but it is excited. I wouldn't say it doesn't work in light but it is certainly too agonizing to the chi–... the subject to be effective. Pashem crystals are wholly ineffective, as are Demiurge stones but..." Hiruzen glanced at the nurse, "We have to run a few more tests to be sure but I think–"

 _Slam_

Sarutobi turned to see Naruto slam his shoulder against the window once more. The redhead moaned for them to stop. His words were not heard but they read his lips. His eyes frantically searched for the most sympathetic person in the room – everyone blurred together.

* * *

 _Everyone in that room was sworn into secrecy about Naruto's newfound ability ...But, you see, the thing about confidentiality agreements is that they do not secure anyone's loyalty. If you really want to keep a secret, secret, keep it to yourself.  
Of course, as Nurse Von Abendroth comforted herself in bangstry and the bosom of yet another fling and Elder Sarutobi drowned his guilt under a bottle of sake and a mantra of the Will of Fire, Itachi made his concerns known to his new confidante._

* * *

"And that tag, that's supposed to keep him calm in the case of a similar incident?" Itachi nodded and Shisui rubbed his cheek as his eyes drifted. "This is worrying... very much so. However..." Behind those sleep heavy eyes, his scheming brain pulled plans apart and the new information was put to use.

Naruto could almost see it happening from his place on his bed. His unresponsive body twitched as he strained every working muscle to keep his head awkwardly tilted towards the two conspiring Uchiha.

Itachi asked something and he read Shisui say, "You're concentrating on the wrong part of this village. Konoha is much more than who's at the top." Then Shisui's eyes drifted to Naruto, "Since when has Naruto been able to do that?"

 _That_ was the purple smoke that seemed to float out of Naruto's skin. Wisps floated unto his back and caressed his spine. Naruto could not see this odd spectacle through his lidded eyes and tilted head and could not widen his eyes in surprise as Itachi explained.

"His nurse says it's the effect of all the artificially induced tests. It could be a permanent fixture but we have to wait till he wakes up."

Shisui said nothing for a few seconds and then stood abruptly. He started to pace, moving in and out of Naruto's scope of view. Whatever he said went unheard and unseen by Naruto whose eyes strained to see anything above Itachi's head.

— **N: O —**

 _It's getting late... We will have to skip over the next two days. No, no complaints. The next few days were much duller than you would enjoy hearing about.  
Naruto trained his newfound ability, his handlers went on patrol, cogs turned; wheels were shaped and reshaped; plans formed. What I am skipping over is all political filler that would bore you with the amount of carrying on our characters do..._

 _...But this is the last day we'll spend here this month._

 _And I'm sure Keiko will be a much better storyteller by the time of your next session.  
Although, there is something important that she forgot to mention – Every single experience Naruto had was controlled and carefully monitored after the Dead Red situation. Her naive storytelling may have made the Warhead Council seem palestral but... well, this is a simple story and it shall stay that way._

* * *

 _ **Day Eight – Twilight**_

"Yōhei-taichou, report?" The message was meant for his handler however it did not go through as he was slipping on a black hooded vest onto his standard black jumpsuit and doing so while squatting precariously on the edge of a tiled roof. Each motion made him wobble dangerously prompting a caution from Yūgao.

' _Naruto-sama, please... focus more on your balance. Also, you need to activate your comm. before..._ '

Naruto's sharp-tipped tongue slid over thin lips as he pressed the earpiece hanging out of his left ear with a single clawed digit and repeated his request.

Itachi's smooth voice crackled through with his immediate response, "I've arrived at the reconnaissance point. Three of the five are present. Hold your position and report back to S.S if anything goes wrong. It has been a few minutes since Hoshi Hyūga arrived and it seems the Uzuki..." Before Naruto could inform him that Shisui had already left the top of the wall, he accidentally turned off when he overextended his torso and fell off the roof.

Before he became a fixture in the road below, Naruto faded into mid-air and reappeared in a darkened spot a few meters into the compound. The guards near his landing spot clutched the communicators in their ears and winced which created enough of a distraction for him to slip through.

' _Excellent, Naruto-sama however you need to reduce the feedback from the–'_

"Noted; now be quiet Yū." The voice begrudgingly went silent allowing Naruto to focus on moving through the shadows of the Ōtomo compound. On the grass, his steps proved too loud and he resorted to using the more silent alternative – an alternative he had spent two days training.

Visually, the technique now appeared to fade Naruto's body into a nearby shadow and remove him from another. Technically, the slithers of purple smoke that now permanently wafted around him, anchored to a destination forcing reformation at the anchor point. Still officially undocumented, it had no name. Internally, he whispered the word as he moved through the compound, jumping from shadow to shadow.

 _Zeraleet_

With every jump, he swiftly avoided the gazes and flashlights of the guards that roamed the grounds and he slowly drew closer to the specified entry point at the side of the main building – a conveniently open window on the second level. In order to prime the jump accurately, he crouched behind a hedge and concentrated on extending his reach.

Before the hooded redhead could complete the leap, however, another internal voice – this one belonging to the ever-annoying Fukiage, interrupted his concentration–

' _We haven't killed anyone in a while, Naruto,_ '

–causing him to miss the window by a few meters. Naruto crashed hard against the building's wall, only grabbing a hold of the wall unconsciously.

' _You dog! You–'_

By slamming his head into the wall – intentionally, this time – Naruto flooded his senses with enough pain to cut the voices off temporarily.

However, the noise also attracted the attention of the guards on patrol closest to him. He cursed as a beam of light shot from the open window forcing him to crawl up the wall to the roof leaving a trail of holes.

He narrowly made it over the top before the guard situated behind the window had the idea to look up.

Hidden in the safety of the rooftop, Naruto made to curse the offending entity before noticing Itachi lying prone ahead of him. His stomach seemed to drop, a feeling he detested. With no path forward, he looked back over the roof edge...

And pulled his head back just in time to avoid another beam of light that would have illuminated his faceless mask to the curious guards below. Having rushed his entry and with no path of retreat or advance, he slowly sat, crossed his legs and removed the mangled bits of his earpiece with great difficulty.

 _Just... focus._

After a few deep breaths, Naruto could hear everything – from the storm building miles away to the footsteps on the wet grass two stories beneath him. He focused – blocking out even his handler's calm breaths – on the conversation taking place in the secure room.

To be fair to its occupants, they had no way to know their privacy seals had been compromised by the Police force that had been assigned to their protection.

The first thing Naruto heard, over the heartbeats and breathing, was the question of a smooth effeminate person, "Why haven't we moved yet?" To Naruto, his frustration was palpable even from meters away. "It's been over a month without a word from Danzō and our allies–"

"Rash moves would plunge us into a prolonged civil war and we cannot trust that our allies will stick to our oh-so noble cause. We need to bide our time." The person that interrupted sounded like a rock over pebbles – it reminded Naruto of something but that memory was sacrificed to the focus needed to keep listening.

"Fugaku-san is right, and even if Danzō were here, we'd be hard-pressed for supplies or assistance in a month given winter is nipping at our heels." Another feminine voice spoke, this one lower-pitched and weighed down by years of smoking – _or using smoke based chakra; same difference_.

Before the conversation could continue, the room's heavy door opened. A woman entered the room, or at least Naruto had to assume the new presence was female from the sound of heels clicking against the floor, dress robes billowing and the pearl necklace shaking in its place.

If Naruto had not ruined his earpiece, he would have heard the updated report and learned her name but even without the new information, he recognized her presence. And it was quite a presence, one that transcended his hearing – _he could almost grasp it._

As she spoke, Naruto strained to hear each whispered syllable, "So... this is happening... I must say Lady Aoi... I had not expected the Ōtomo clan's seals to be so faulty."

Then Naruto could hear nothing else from the room and noise from his surroundings replaced it. After a few seconds, he adjusted the hood atop his head and gave up trying to break past the new barrier that had been erected along the walls of the room; blocking out even his keen hearing.

Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt

Naruto looked down at his hand and recognized the incessant buzzing of his broken communicator as the signal of an incoming message. With the sparks flowing from it, he was not about to place the device in his ear again. Instead, he slammed it against his palm and focused on the person in front of him.

"Damn it! Inichi," The remainder of his fake life still annoyed him to no end, "It seems a new barrier is in place; all our bugs have been disabled. We're pulling out now! I need you–" Itachi paused, startled when he turned around and saw his charge behind him, "Naruto..."

Without skipping a beat, Naruto answered, "Yes, Kōhei-taichou?"

"Why are you...?" Naruto simply got off the floor, walked over to his handler and placed something in the pocket of the man's vest. "Is this... your comm.?" Itachi inquired semi-rhetorically studying the mangled piece of equipment.

"Report: I fell from my position and my transmitter blew out, so I had to regroup but then my target window was compromised, so I climbed up here. Oh, and Shisui has probably been... compromised." Once Naruto was satisfied with cleaning his vest, he shot an unsure but wide grin at Itachi's masked face – _entirely unnecessary given the featureless mask._

Itachi grabbed Naruto and promptly sped off the rooftop with a _shunshin_.

* * *

One long vertical trek up the wall later, the duo came to a stop at the top of the great wall, in the same spot they had fallen from. Naruto shrugged and escaped from Itachi's loose grasp. After a few struggling steps, he keeled over the merlon to retch – _dizzy, dizzy, dizzy._

As the redhead shivered the contents of his stomach over the wall, Itachi cast a pensive gaze down, his mind in turmoil over the mission failure and Shisui's disappearance.

After regaining some semblance of balance, Naruto joined Itachi in gazing down at the thirty-foot wall that disappeared into brume a few feet below. While every little detail had already been meticulously filed into his mental archives, it was easy to get lost in the sight.

From his position above it, he could see the massive rampart that traveled from the north – _from the Main_ Gate – and curved in a half-ring around the Ōtomo compound before continuing towards the Hokage Mountain in a path to the south.

As Naruto studied the strange black pillars that protruded from the side of the wall at regular intervals, the nasal tone of Shigemi Hara chimed in, _'Those pillars do more than support the wall. They are built from steel-adenite – the only chakra conducting alloy in existence, what does that tell you?_ '

Itachi stopped pacing to glance at Naruto the moment the boy began speaking,

"I think... those are H'mar-Ibizi matrices," Naruto pointed to a large carving running down the left side of the pillar, "It is melding with the Pashem crystals fitted along the edge... the entire thing is a weapon but what kind of–"

' _N-naruto-sama, my apologies but the Purple–'_

"Yū... you realize that when you speak, my thought process is interrupted, right?" Naruto tapped his head repeatedly, emphasizing his desire for mental silence and confusing Itachi who simply observed. "As I was saying, the Pashem crystals that have been fitted would amplify the chakra load – ah," He paused to look down at his abdomen, feeling a slow burn spreading along the middle part. "What is–"

Naruto fell to his knees with a slight groan, alarming Itachi yet again.

"Inichi, what's wrong?" Itachi asked; a few cautious steps carried him to the kneeling boy.

The boy was trapped in a state of unending agony; spikes of pain piercing his abdomen spread their touch across his lungs and along his spine. Naruto finally conceded once he realized that the battle was against something inevitable – _so much for high pain tolerance_.

Itachi immediately slapped the suppression seal tag on Naruto's forehead.

"Y-yū..." Before he could whisper anything else, the pain abruptly disappeared; a cycle of labored breathing the only evidence it had even occurred

' _Naruto-sama... the Purple Woman asks your presence at your earliest convenience... I am sorry you had to–'_ Her concerned voice made to apologize but Naruto cared little for it, opting instead to tear off the seal tag on his forehead and find a seat for his sore back.

Itachi looked on with pity as Naruto limply crawled towards the battlement and propped himself below a merlon. Through the lens of Itachi's Sharingan, he saw black tubes retreating into Naruto's core, clearly contrasted against the deep blue hues of Naruto's chakra.

While the phenomenon was still mysterious, he was glad it had not occurred anytime during the operation. That there were two incidents in the last two days made him wonder how many the belligerent redhead had managed to hide.

Itachi slowly took a seat on top of the battlement, next to Naruto.

"What's happening with Shisui?" Naruto remarked, eyeing Itachi suspiciously. Itachi, however, looked up to the dying orange sky and sighed.

"Right now, he's deep in the game."

The shocked look on Naruto's face slowly turned to irritation. "What? What does that mean?" Itachi let out a long-suffering sigh prompting Naruto's keen eyes to start cataloging every slight motion he made.

 _Slumped shoulders, resigned and exhausted_ , "What if I told you that for every single second I spend on this mission, I know less than what I knew at first?" _Slight pause and glance, he wants an answer_

"Is this one of yours and Shisui's ploys to–" _A frown; teeth clenched, he's annoyed – not the right answer then?_

Itachi interrupted the boy, "There are people aside from you, Naruto." _He's distracted, something happened on the mission_. Itachi took his time before continuing, "...I dedicated years of my life to this and for what?"

Naruto stared hard and quirked his head. He could tell Itachi was conflicted but couldn't tell why. A thought and a name came to mind, "Do you know a Fugaku?" _A sharp intake of breath; that's good but he's covering his face... is he crying?_

Then Itachi started to laugh into his palm. As the chuckling slowly progressed into full-blown muffled gasping, Naruto smiled all.

 _That is a nice sound._

An absurd question followed the laughter, "Do you know how old you are, Naruto?" It caught the young redhead off-guard.

 _Huh_ "My... age? No, I have never been told."

"You're not likely to be older than the Decade... Do you know how old I am?" This time, Naruto's brow furrowed in confusion as he shook his head, "I'm thirteen, Naruto."

Itachi sighed when Naruto showed no recognition or understanding but said nothing else. Naruto remembered hearing Yūgao say something about Itachi being a 'child prodigy'. He had no idea why age was such an important factor in anything. From his experiences, a child would die on the battlefield – prodigy or not. Perhaps prodigies were exploited differently by the Warhead; children could be annoyingly discrete after all.

"–Nichi!" His head shot up, ending that train of thought. Finding his handler missing from his seat above, Naruto turned to find him. "Get up. Our patrol hour is up..." Begrudgingly, Naruto slowly rose, dusted his pants and walked over to the waiting Itachi. Another thought struck him.

"You never did answer my question; who is this Fugaku?" The seconds trickled on; Itachi kept silent; they walked. Naruto made to ask again but Itachi beat him to it.

"He's my father."

* * *

 _That ends our tale tonight. Keiko-chan, please stay behind._

 _Thank you for the story, Uzumaki-sama._

 _..._

 _Uzumaki-dono, why is Uchiha Fugaku so important to the Coup?_

 _Oh, important? Not to the coup, no. His life serves no purpose to our story but his death... his death was a catalyst for something much greater; much more so._

 _Will you tell me how he died? There is not much in the Hall on this whole event._

 _I know and I will. First though..._

— **N: O —**

Kenpei-tai: Gendamarie; basically the standard civilian police outfit.

Ninja Keiji-Bu; the department that deals with shinobi criminal activity

Taichou: Captain

Han Chino: Counterintelligence

Bangstry; Masterful violence

Macilent; Likely to wither

Blottesque; dull **  
**

 **Well, if you thought I had dropped out yet again, this is a reminder that I will still be updating. However, updates will be slower than hoped.  
It should be noted that I use some esoteric words (I made an effort to define some of them). If this breaks your immersion, you'll have to bear with me as I am simply building the story's characters.  
As always, leave a review telling us what you thought of this chapter.**

 **Best Regards,  
TGE.**


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